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February 4 Saturday Bicycle touring Italy
Sardinia from a free bike camping spot on Saint Antioc Island
Sardegna to a seaside camp spot on the west coast of Sardinia We have to cycle to a town before 1 PM, when everything locks up for the weekend. We hastily pack up our bicycle touring tent and bicycle touring gear. The little island of Antioc has some steep hills. Great views of the sea. An open-pit mining area dominates the interior. The road becomes narrower, but the pavement is new and smooth. There is rarely any traffic. A town on our map, Canais, fails to show up. Soon we come to the end of the pavement. A brutal rock-strewn path looms menacingly ahead. We pull our fully loaded touring bicycles to a stop and gape. Two guys at a car parked nearby ask, "Calasetta?" "Yes," I say. (That's a town on the north end of Saint Antioc Island.) He points down the road. Holy cow. Three kilometres of gravel he indicates. We jounce off (that's a combination of jolting and bouncing) down the path on our fully loaded touring bicycles. We encounter a fork in the one-lane strada. We go left. It becomes a track. We end at the sea. A scuba diver has a tent set up, blending in with the tan-coloured rock and dead yellow seagrass. We turn our fully loaded touring bicycles around and head back to try the right fork. The road becomes sandy and impossibly steep. Old Sheppody Road starts to look like a four lane freeway in comparison. We see tiny blue flowers on bushes at the top. Another fork and we try left again. There is a decided lack of signage on this part of Saint Antioc Island. Back onto pavement. Another fork with no indication of which way to town. We go left to stay by the sea and end up coming into Calasetta on a back road. In centro, or town centre, we buy food: bread (I go to five stores before cleaning up the scraps -- it's almost noon and bread is 'finito' for the day); frozen pizza that has very little cheese, olives, mushrooms (fungus) and something that looks like cabbage, the crust is thin but it's fairly tasty -- definitely not McCain's however; Oro (a drink for kids that is coffee flavoured -- they start them young here -- I couldn't find any cocoa. Yogurt (banana; pineapple; and coffee flavoured); eggs, tomato, ham, cheese for omelets, hot chocolate (I found at another store on a back shelf), three kilos or oranges -- one kilo each of three different kinds, pears, and an onion, dark rye buns, and two slices of pizza that turned out to have a crunchy crust. Grocery shopping is such a surprise sometimes. Hope the cheese is good tasting. It's chilly and windy as we cycle off to find a spot to eat. We find some benches overlooking the port. I see a fire blazing through a window that looks cozy and inviting. We complete the loop to Saint Antioc and cycle back over the causeway to leave the island. On the causeway, we are almost blown over. Saw a guy in town with an immense bundle of twigs tied to the back of his bike. He was having a hard time trying to push and balance his load through the gusty wind, almost losing it several times for the three blocks we watched him. I wasn't quick enough for a picture. Cycled north into a strong wind. Came across an old guy in a vineyard plowing with his mule and one-blade plow. They go about 100 feet to the end of a row. Rest. Turn around and come back. Rest. Turn around. It looks like it is tough work for both man and beast. We need to get out of the wind. We cycle to a bridge, then look under it for shelter. It's fairly calm under the bridge, but it has the makings of a garbage dump with tires and old appliances scattered about. Sharon returned to our bikes, laughing. Yesterday, when we took so long to find a spot, trying to find the perfect hide-a-way free camping spot, going up and down the coastal road pondering, and trekking along the cliffside, that I told her we had to stay in more garbage dumps so we would fully appreciate the spot we finally reluctantly decided upon -- flat, behind a bush for wind protection, a view of the sea, but it was on a road that could only be driven up by some determined 4 wheeler. We're getting used to finding free bicycle camping spots that are inaccessible to vehicles. We decided against the garbage dump site beneath the bridge, even though it was calm. We cycled bravely on until we spotted a thin little-used path across the road and headed to the sea. We cycled the faint path amid the dried tracks of sheep hoof prints and found a choice spot behind a big tree to block the wind. There are pincushion plants on this part of Sardinia, with clumps of needle sharp stalks radiating from the base of the plant. |
