Gravina in Puglia

It has been exactly a month since I came to Italy, my yearly pilgrimage to the holy land of bicycling. Over the past 4 weeks I have been training hard to get in some decent form for the Giro delle dolomiti in early August. Every 4th week is a recovery week, recovery here means same amount of kms but just not intense. I thought it was a perfect excuse to put my Bianchi together and head out for a tour. Also I realized that in the coming 4 weeks I would not get another opportunity. To add there were few threads here last week about touring bikes that motivated me to jump the rope.
My in-laws have been coping with the flurry of bikes that gets unpacked every time I visit. We have 5 bikes here now. The post man made it known recently that he works exclusively for me these days. I love the Volpe a lot and it reminded me of all the good times I had in Greece 2 years ago. In an instant I put the bike together, threw a rack on it, dumped some clothes and other essentials in one pannier and cameras in the other. Ohh and I also installed the new saddle. I was a bit skeptical going on a tour with a new saddle but somehow was confident because I rarely have saddle problems. I sat up in the night to draw a few routes and downloaded the courses on the Garmin 800. I decided to leave as early as 6 am. 
Woke up in the middle of the night feeling everything was done in a haste and I would not enjoy a tour since this was the first time I was going on a 3 day tour on my own. Missed my wife a lot and went to bed confirming I was not going to go. Woke up in the morning at 8! Do I go or stay back and enjoy the days at the beach? After some encouragement from the family and also from my wife back in SL I decided to go. I told either I will be back in an hour or after 3 days. And i set off. I was going to Gravina in puglia, some 100 kms away from my town further south. This place has a wonderful historic center and if I am not wrong the land around it feeds half of Italy. My plan was to ride there and spend rest of the 2 days exploring the country side and small villages. This is a very remote region in Italy not like Tuscany or the rest. 
So I began thinking I was going to ride to the next town and see if I wanted to continue. I am the most skeptical bike tourer. I was enjoying the bike. felt very smooth. I am more used to riding these roads with rigid carbon bikes. This one felt like a 4 wheel drive with super suspensions. 
Above are 2 photographs. One is as I approach the first town Locorotondo, a town that makes great white wine and the other is a shot inside the historic center of the same town.

I enjoyed a fantastic cappuccino in that town above. Took a few photographs. As I was pondering over my future plans a whole bunch of bike tourers from the US and Italy rode into town. They loved my bike and we started to talk for a few minutes and that really pushed me to go ahead with the tour. Within minutes I was on the bike riding thru a very familiar countryside. Rolling hills lined with olive trees and fruit orchards and open landscape with wheat. This time of the year the wheat has already been harvested. The first 50k or so is my training ground and I have ridden infinite number of kms thru it but most of it in a very suffering fashion. In a default mode I saw myself pushing the touring bike at 30km/hr! Some bad habits die hard! I had remind to myself that I had to ride slow and indulge otherwise I was looking at finishing my 100kms ride inside 3 hours. Thus I stopped and took these photographs.


We have been having a heat wave of sorts and the temperature now was lingering at above 38C. It was hot and I was feeling it. I was also hungry. I decided to ride town to town, most times are just 10-15kms apart. I rode thru a few without stopping and decided to take a break and fuel myself at Gioia di Colle at the 50k mark. These are rides with no shades. The ride is beautiful but one start seeing mirages after a few kms under the sun. I was happy to take this break and down a good drink and some snacks.

Anyways by the time I left Gioia del Colle it was 1pm. I knew a section of the ride was going to be on a very busy road almost a secondary highway and I wanted to avoid those busy hours. So I decided to ride on and not stop anywhere till my final destination. As I got close to the next few towns it had an industrial look to it. Nothing attractive. I just kept my head down and rode. As I got close to Gravina, the trees started to disappear and the land looked barren with miles and miles of wheat fields. Massive tractors replaced the fast cars. I was cooked by the time I got into Gravina. I had spoken to a friend who knew a good place to stay right in the center. I called him and he guided me to the B&B. They had a very spacious garage in the bottom of the building where I left the bike and headed to my room. A good shower and I settled on the roof terrace for a beer.

A view from the roof terrace right in the historic area.