Family Fun in Finale Ligure

Got lots of good input from people here when I asked for info on Finale on this thread https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/finale-finally/ and wanted to put some notes in case they’re of any use to anyone planning a trip. A few photos, too, but as ever the photos are only on the bits where I wasn’t too involved in the riding, so they’re a bit pisch.

Righto. October Half Term. Traditionally spent in the Peebles Hydro nipping out for a few soggy laps at Glentress in between showers. This year we went to Italy, via Nice airport, and it was good.

Flights from Man to Nice with Jet2 were about £600 then £70 return for each bike; which was shit loads cheaper than Easyjet/Ryanair. Also a lot less unpleasant (for example when the bike bag was 34kg, and the hold bag was 25kg) And when they let us swap a big baggage for a hold luggage free of charge….
Hotel was 1700 Euros for the week for family of four. Pretty basic room, but food was ok and it was very handy. http://www.hotelsangiuseppe.com/en/hotel/welcome.html
The hotel picked us up from the airport and dropped us off with bikes. 320 Euros return, which was a good deal. That was included in the 1700 if I recall. It was by far the most expensive family holiday we’ve ever done, around £2800 for the week. Made St Anton skiing at half term look cheap. But it was very enjoyable, and something a bit different.

I read loads of posts on here about packing bikes in boxes etc, and figured it can’t be that tricky. Of course I forgot the small detail that I had to do four of the bloody things. In the end Hellfrauds refused to give me any old boxes, as they insist on recycling them. In the end I bottled it and coughed for a couple of Evocs and the loan of a bag from a friend

Even then it still took me four evenings of stress to get only 3 bags dissassembled and packed. Nightmare. Thankfully that was mainly due to inexperience. When we took them apart to fly back it only took about 2 hours for three bikes.

The flights were at stupid o’clock so the missus drove me and the four big bags at around 4:30 am to the newly shitterised Manc airport. Dumped me on the pavement with a pile of luggage. Walk 10m with two bags. Go back for other two bags, walk 10 to the first bags then another 10m. Go back for the first bags, walk 20m. Go back 10m pick up other bags, walk 20m. I eventually arrived at checkin just before the missus arrived back from home in a taxi with two sleepy kids.

Dragging all the kit around was hard work. The rolly bags were ok, but the soft bag was a nightmare. In addition to the fullsusser it also had a 2m Pragmasis chain in it which weighed 5kg. Silly man 😊

If you don’t fancy paying for the airport shuttle then Hotel San Guiseppe is seriously close to the train station. This was the view from our window:

The room did vibrate a bit when the goods trains went past.

I didn’t really have a clue where to start, so had booked us on an uplift day with FreeRide Finale on day 2. On day one though I just had a wander around. Luckily I ended up at Bike Link Finale https://www.facebook.com/bikelinkfinale/ which is a tiny little unprepossessing looking bike shop on the main drag near the hotel. Spoke to Pam and she was just bloody awesome. She explained how it all works and an hour later she drove me and Son1 up the hill in her pickup to the top of RollerCoaster. She pointed in the correct general direction and left us to it.

It was great. Me and the kid could just bimble along at our own pace, with no stress and no pressure. We found Rollercoaster and did that. A few portages for the kid but generally ok.
Think this is Rollercoaster. Apologies, it’s been three months:

Lovely lovely lovely

One of the harder bits (yes, I know it doesn’t look hard)

Rollercouster really lived up to its name. Amazing flowy up down, round etc

Pops you out at the church

As you can see, the weather was reasonable 😊

At this point you can go back up the road for two km to a dirt track that takes you back along to the top of Kill Bill, Cacciatore etc etc. The kid moaned a bit but it wasn’t too bad. Then we searched about for Cacciatore. Took a while, and even then we weren’t sure it was right. The kid portaged bits, like this bit (photo is of a later descent when he did it)

100% disclosure, that photo might actually be Kill Bill. I can’t remember, but who really cares. It was a steep gnarly downhill on the kid’s new bike half way down a mountain that he hadn’t had to ride up.

Can’t remember if we got another shuttle up that day. Each shuttle is 10 euros per person.

Next day was Finale Freeride with Son1 and 2. The problem was that Son2 had a hernia op 3 weeks previous and was still a bit phased from a snowboarding break earlier in the year

I’ve not really got any photos of the day as it didn’t really work. Though the bigun managed fine, his wee brother wasn’t on form (and his useless prick father had left his suspension locked out, the **** (soooo annoyed with myself for that))

To summarise, the guide sped off and left us three and two German women at the back. So far so expected, but on a few occasions we didn’t have a clue where to go. Just blundered about the forest. It wasn’t just us though, these two Germans were also left behind. Not ideal.

Anyway, it was always loads of stress trying to keep up with the group. Son2 had an OTB and hurt his other wrist. Not Good. He bravely kept on, but was in a bad way. So we sat out the next run. We did the next run though and he managed to get back in the game. I was so proud of him; he was hurting and worried, but he got it together.

The big problem was that being October the ground was covered in leaves and the Flow Trails on the Calizzano Freeride tour http://www.finaleligurefreeride.com/copia-di-home were knee deep in leaves. That was part of the reason we got lost, you literally couldn’t see the path. And riding the trail was bloddy tricky. Just like early season off piste skiing. You had no idea what rocks and nasties were lying under the layer of leaves.
Anyway, to finish off the guide took us on Rollercoaster again, and having done it with Son1 the day before I knew it was ok for Son 2. He had a ball.

So, the key thing at this point was the flow trails were further from the coast, with different woodland, with broadleaf trees. Which made riding in October not very good. Whereas the trails just above Finale were different trees, more spindly and Mediterranean, which didn’t choke the trails. The standard trails were also much more heavily used than the Finale Freeride only trails, which meant that the leaves were even less.
So basically we abandoned the idea of doing stressful guided groups and went for the lovely relaxing, go where we want, when we want as fast/slow as we want option. And Pam at Bike Link was bloody excellent. She was so flexible, and because she only had a weeny pickup she was happy to go where we wanted, when we wanted rather than having the bother of going in a huge minibus group. And she also gave us the necessary info to know which trails to go and which to avoid.

TBC if anyone’s interested and I can face the struggle of trying to post on the STW forum.

Nice write up! £2.8k for a week hol for 3 of you sounds like a very good deal tbh. Especially considering the transfer to/from nice. I’d like to take my family somewhere like finale. Wife expressed some interest after seeing some of my photos. I doubt my lad would be able to ride a lot of the trails just yet though. Got a good test as we are going to lake Garda this summer, so I might take him up to one of the trails.
Good info on up lift company. Might try them this year when me and lads go out there. How many does the van fit?

That’s extremely helpful, thanks fella!

Was actually four of us not three. So 700 each all in. My post was a bit garbled on that front.

Will post loads more when I have the spare energy to engage with the forum editing functionality.

Thanks for the write-up – interesting to hear about the “guide” just disappearing though – you’d think there would be some sort of “stop and regroup” arrangement, a bit like happens on most non-guided group rides?

Thanks for the info, off there in the summer. Can’t wait 🙂

Great write up & very useful. I went a few times last year and really enjoyed it, did the Land Rover tour with finale Freeride a couple of times, the second time was in October and the trails were pretty leaf covered, much preferred the classic the classic tour . I really like the idea of finding your own way around and using the shuttle when needed as I found the tours a bit hit and miss (and I don’t like stopping for a big lunch for an hour or so) so will check out bikelink which sounds great. We stayed in the campsite in Finale in the summer and in an appartement in Finale Boro in October (amazing place)

Shout to Honoroublegeorge for the recommendation for Hotel SanGuiseppe. He said

“

Maybe more towards the hostel end of things, so maybe not what you’re after if you wanted something a bit more plush for a family holiday, but it’s cheap, clean, has a buffet breakfast, bike lock-up, and a pool. And they do transfers from Nice for 160 each way. Headed back myself next month.

And he was spot on correct. Well, not completely sure he did go back next month, but the rest of what he said was defo correct.

In response to Ffati’s post on this thread: https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/rollercoaster-or-nato-base-tomorrow-for-a-warm-up/

Was going to be dossing in my van. Any recemondations?

Yes indeed. I scoped out two options for you. At the west end of the beach there appears to be loads of motorhomes parked up. Didn’t get close enough to see what the deal was but you can just make it out at the bottom of this picture:

Ok, I’ll admit it, you can’t make them out; but they are there. The other option appeared to be just under the Autostrada where the return route from Nato Base goes through

Most days we went past there were a couple of vans and a popup roof tent pitched up there. No idea what the deal was but it looked cheap.
HTH

On day three the kids needed a break and the missus wanted to have a cycle and see how she was holding up. We’d bought this book from the hotel: https://trails.de/trailsbook/liguria-trails-1-finale-ligure/ It was very good, if you speak German. Don’t think there is an English version in the pipeline. It gives a good indication of grades, but the maps are over optimisticly simplistic (like all foreign maps). We did one of the rides up San Bernadino, and it was excellent.

Slog up the hill (in the sun, natch)

Every few minutes a couple of seaplanes flew over and did a lovely glide along the sea picking up water. There was a fire on the bottom area below Nato Base and so they spent ages trying to put it out. This meant the area was closed, which complicated things slightly given that some areas were also occasionally closed for hunting. But we got some advice from Pam and stayed on slopes just east of Nato around Ingegnere. No great hardship. The trailmap here http://bikehotelsfinaleligure.it/images/finaleligure-trail-map/cartina-mtb-finale-ligure-trails.pdf is also available to buy printed on special fallapart paper.

Seaplanes doing their thang again to try to put the fire out.

..then bimbled about on the plateau trying to match up the book, the crap map, the half decent map and Google maps whenever we had reception!

Somewhere in the woods on an XC ride

The route was brilliant. It was only a 3/6 on the German books difficulty rating but it had lods of bits I failed on.

down some lovely river bed/gorge things

and then back out into the open

Needless to say, the rock climbing there is legendary. We took all our kit with us but ended up not climbing a single route. Testament to how bloody excellent the riding was.

Also did another XC route to the west of Finale, which was good. But the navigation wasn’t easy. Luckily STW, in the form of mikewsmith came to the rescue with TrailForks. It absolutely rocks. Bloody hell. Revelation.
Next day me and the big kid did Rollercoaster, KillBill, Cacciatore, Cravarezza and Ingegnere. It was marvellous. So cool being able to follow this blue line on the map with a little arrows telling you where to go. We made a few minor errors but not much. Opened up the whole place to us. We even picked up some random Swiss dude who seemed very surprised at my pretty excellent Navigation all the way down the hill.

Bottom of Ingegnere?

It wasn’t plain sailing through. In order to avoid the 2km uphill from the Rollercoaster church to the top of KillBill etc I decided to follow the dirt road from the church and then cut across up some path. Turned out to be an old disused enduro route. In that stubborn I’veStartedSoIllFinish bloke fashion I declined to turn back and so we spent around an hour thrashing through the undergrowth, fallen trees and general steepness. Son1 coped well with the effort involved and his dad’s general uselessness.

We went swimming most days, in the hotel pool and the sea. It wasn’t that cloudy. Much warmer than Glentress, and better ice cream.

So we then basically did three more days in a similar vein. Uplift with Pam at around 10am after a leisurely start. Either Rollercoaster Hill or Bassnato as she called it. Took a while to get the lie of the land, but we sorted it out

Then down some lovely flowy earthy trails with the occasional bit of proper gnarl.
Splendid.

On one trip we did a bit more uphill/XC route from Bassnato and ended up clocking 40km with around 750m ascent and presumably 1800 m descent. Basically it was exactly what I’d been searching for for years. Good interesting XC, down amazing fast flowy or gnadgery hard routes with the edge taken off by the van uplift. Son1 got very much more confident over the week just from doing more hard stuff than he normally does in a year.
Son2 loved it.

amazing ditch like trails. Don’t get caught in there when a stormtrooper comes past though….

There were a few bits that some of us portaged:

And more ditches. We pushed back up and did this one a few times

tricky bit at the bottom of Rollercoaster (well it is for small people who are a bit broken)

On the last day there was a bit of low cloud, which made Bassnato quite eerie.

Many of the riders were really friendly, but there were the usual TooCoolForSchool types who seemed to resent us being there. Tough shit yah baam.

Somewhere on the ridge east from Bassnato

Right. That’ll have to do for now until I can think of anything else relevant. Just to top off an amazing week, we spent 4 hours grounded at Nice airport in the most horrendous thunderstorms, and then the week after huge swathes of forest in northern Italy got flattened in huge storms and floods. Nice to be lucky sometimes.
And I guess at least it put the fire out.

Oh yes, whilst I remember, as various people did say, there are a lot of very difficult trails out there. I did one that seemed more like a via feratta than mtb trail (sans kids). Loved it. We had a great family trip, so if you’re lot are half decent then get yourself over there (just don’t take up all the bike bag spaces from Manchester please)

For example, this is the first green trail I’ve ever pushed on (not this bit, natch) But it gives an idea where things go from here.

Remember Kids,… Bike Link Finale 😊

Damnation. End blockquote in the wrong place
Any idea how to fix it?
I can see the offending item just after i mention honoroublegeorge

Great write up. Looks like I really enjoyable trip. I hope when my 2 boys are old enough we’ll be able to do something similar.

Hooray. Drac fixed my tags.

Many thanks