We (myself, English, lives on east coast of island in Ogliastra + two Sards) are writing a mountain bike guide to Sardinia. I just finished my 26 routes in “my area”, which range from “Easy Rides for Everyone” to XC, All Mountain and Free Ride. There is a choice between technically-easier granite and schist mountains to the rockier, Alpine-style 1000 vertical m single tracks of the limestone “Supramonte”, the inland part of which has much more of a wilderness feel to it than the Alps (no signs, no-one else around, no mobile phone signal), while the coastal part includes rides down to what’s acknowledged to be the best coastline in the Mediterranean, uninhabited to boot.

You can enjoy a beach holiday here while still doing Alpine riding.

Yesterday with a sore rib I am writing up the last route and sorting photos. I thought I’d share some with the forum.

Saturdays’s ride: crocuses along the track, snow still on the high mountains


Cala Sisine in November

An old muletrack on the Supramonte

Technical/Freeride December

Fun brakes-off blasts January

There are also videos of the rides at
http://www.youtube.com/user/mtbogliastra Our association MountainBike Ogliastra
http://www.youtube.com/user/thelemonhouse also lots of climbing videos, mostly in English

The guide should be published around Xmas 2011 (in Italian) but before then I have translated some of the route descriptions we’ve put onto the main Italian forum http://itinerari.mtb-forum.it/countries/view/52 into English. Previously, there was only the 1991 mountain bike guidebook, “Sole, Sale e Salita”, which has been out of print and unavailable for a long time. Its author, Chicco Porcu, scanned his own copy and you can download a pdf here. It has an introduction and glossary in English, so non-Italian speakers, with a bit of practice, can use it. Or there’s a translation we came across in internet here. Note that we didn’t prepare this translation and haven’t checked it, and that we don’t agree with some of “Sole Sale Salita”‘s valuations of difficulty, although this may simply be because tracks have changed in the last 20(!) years.

For more info, contact me peter@peteranne.it. There’s a good local scene, BTW, but they speak Italian or Sard 😉 Some good swearing in Italian on the vids BTW.
cheers Peter

Sweet – wish I’d had this book when I was in Sardinia last year. I really wasn’t a big fan of the place – the beaches were nice, but the chain-smoking, leather-skinned, boob-jobbed Italians weren’t my cup of tea, and the cost of everything was pretty extortionate.
We were on the Costa Smerelda, mind, but some biking would really have cheered me up! 🙂

Sweet – wish I’d had this book when I was in Sardinia last year. I really wasn’t a big fan of the place – the beaches were nice, but the chain-smoking, leather-skinned, boob-jobbed Italians weren’t my cup of tea, and the cost of everything was pretty extortionate. We were on the Costa Smerelda, mind, but some biking would really have cheered me up!

Sorry you ended up on the Costa Smeralda. We don’t have any rides in the guide on the Costa Smeralda, which, to quote Nationbal Geographic:
[*]”The proliferation of tourist resorts isolates Costa Smeralda. They are not connected with the island’s cultural dimension, and they don’t benefit the local population….”[/*]

[*]”… the area does not welcome local Sardinian people and is a foreign enclave.”[/*]

[*]”Second-home communities and resort development have turned this region into a caricature of itself. The entire town of Porto Cervo looks more like a shopping mall/retirement community/country club in Arizona than an authentic Sardinian village.”[/*]

We (road) ride the Costa Smeralda on a stage of the Giro of Sardinia road race, but don’t stay there. Contrast this to the local mountain biking scene. A group from Cagliari, 40-60 riders, on Sunday 17 April go to ride this ride and then ride down a single that was the path from the village to the sheepfold where they have lunch of of local cheese, ham, roast suckling pig, goat, wine. The sheepfold has existed for 200 years, when I mapped this ride for the guidebook, the owner Sebastian gave me for lunch pecorino cheese roasted over the open fire with honey on pistoccu bread, wine, filu ‘e ferru (local grappa). My head was spinning as I rode back up but maybe the alcohol helped me clean the bits I was ”nowhere near riding” on 7 January on the descent I tried afterwards.

Though the guide isn’t coming out for a while, the information has been gathered and is in my head/PC, and it’d be great to have people to ride with.

Peter

Any chance of a complete English translation (in the fine tradition of the Pietra di Luna book)? Sardinia is one of the most spectacular and serene places I have visited, and I did wonder about the MTB possibilities during climbing holidays in the past, but was not sure about access and such, particularly with all the pelleted road signs 🙂 …

Any chance of a complete English translation (in the fine tradition of the Pietra di Luna book)? Sardinia is one of the most spectacular and serene places I have visited, and I did wonder about the MTB possibilities during climbing holidays in the past, but was not sure about access and such, particularly with all the pelleted road signs 🙂 …

Oooh, good point about English language!

Costa Smerelda was interesting enough, but we should definitely have gone elswhere. It was actually the second half of a trip round Corsica, which was ace (but overly expensive).

Anyway, I’ll know for next time! 🙂

Any chance of a complete English translation (in the fine tradition of the Pietra di Luna book)? Sardinia is one of the most spectacular and serene places I have visited, and I did wonder about the MTB possibilities during climbing holidays in the past, but was not sure about access and such, particularly with all the pelleted road signs …

I translated the 5th edition of Pietra di Luna, finished in November 2010 and the author Maurizio is slowly working his way through pagination. He just had his anterior cruciate ligament operated on so should be tied to the computer for a while now and get it finished. There’s a good chance Versante Sud will translate the MTB guide into English. Our day job is running a B&B (see ads Singletrack 62-4) and descriptions of routes as well as GPS files and loan of a GPS are available here, as well as hire of good hardtails. However, I am always a bit reluctant to mention this ‘cos it sounds that we just want people to come and stay here. In fact, we want people to know about Sardinia and enjoy the island which is very underdeveloped. We bolt climbs, have suggested walks for two new walking guides to the island, write the MTB guide…then people can decide where to stay afterwards, once they’ve decided the island is for them.
ciao Peter