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The Tuscan landscape hosts this fantastic self guided mountain bike holiday. The famous sights of Tuscany are combined with great biking exploring woodlands, hills and valleys with some great tracks and routes that link famous hilltop towns such as San Gimignano, Siena, Pienza. This holiday will enchant with its natural beauty as well as reward with the quality of the riding. While perhaps better known for its rolling hills and quiet roads, Tuscany's long history of trade and agriculture has resulted in an extensive network of trails of all kinds. Thrilling forest singletrack is mixed with scenic country lanes and the rolling landscape gives us challenging climbs and fun descents.
After arriving in Pisa we will drive you through the beautiful Tuscan Landscape, arriving at your first accommodation in the countryside of San Gimignano. Here you'll stay in a stunning Agriturismo surrounded by vineyards where your host will treat you to your first Tuscan tastes. Over the next 3 days you'll bike across forested hills, through vineyards, down river valleys, across streams, past abandoned farmhouses and up to tiny fortified villages. Some rides follow the ancient Via Francigena pilgrimage route and the Eroica roads, hence calling this trip the “Sacred Routes”! The Via Francigena was a trail which once connected Canterbury to Rome, while the Eroica routes are gravel roads used in the Giro d'Italia before tarmac was common.
Midway you'll arrive in Siena, steeped in Italian Renaissance atmosphere. Scattered with great restaurants and superb Gelateria, this is the perfect place to end the first part of the trip. For the next three days you enter the Crete Senesi, where you are in for some thrilling riding along steep valleys, dense forests, rivers and the legendary “badlands”, eroded clay slopes around Siena and Val D'Orcia. Here the riding is a roller coaster of tracks and trails riding from lowlands to open ridge views, enjoying descents that will leave you smiling all day!
