Trying to catch up on the posts since the moving of the web hosting has put them so far behind.
From the cape it was a short 30+ km to Alghero for a 2 day rest.
We really needed a day off the bike mostly so I could get the suits to the coin laundry for a much needed wash. It was very windy here, but in the old city with the narrow streets it was quite pleasant. The old city wall and ramparts are breezy for sure.
We are making for the mountains again and crossing over to the east side of the island. We will go south about 2/3 of the way down since we have been told the riding further south is not very interesting. We are headed to Lansuei.
Riding south we headed first to Bosa along the coast road. It is nice, but not like the coast of Corsica.
From here we rode cross country for a boring hours to get to the hill country. There were several small villages where you had to snake thru the streets to find the main road again. Thank goodness for the directional arrows for the one ways and the GPS!
We did find a small off road route, which takes you past one of the bronze age Nuraghe.
“The nuraghe is the main type of ancient megalithic edifice found in Sardinia, developed during the Nuragic Age between 1900 and 730 BCE. Today it has come to be the symbol of Sardinia and its distinctive culture, the Nuragic civilization. More than 7000 nuraghi have been found, though archeologists believe that originally there were not fewer than 10,000.”
Here we were on the right track if the number of bikers we saw was an indication. it was vroom vroom in both directions. Once we got to Ghilarza the riding was much better. By the way finding your way points here can be a challenge since the Sardinian spelling is used on the GPS so you have to look that up for every town on wikipedia. Even then it may not help since Ghilarza is listed as G??????. We were up over the mountains with switch backs up and down several passes. There was almost no traffic if not for the bikers.
We arrived to Lanusei (Lanusèi), which is a town on the cliffside and the approach is up some very steep streets, but we had an amazing view to the coast. Walking into town was a lot easier then the km walk back up the stairs and hills. I was a good way to walk of the pizza we had for dinner.
We had only about 100 km to go today to the small beach town of Cala Ganone, but we managed to make it more interesting by going “the direct route”.
First we back tracked a bit up the mountain and then did a cross country route. The one section started at the back of a small steep town with twisty cobbled streets. Initially it was paved, but rapidly the road quality deteriorated.
Several sections of the road have fallen away from the mountain and there is a dirt track around.
In one area there was a large landslide and instead of clearing it they just pored a concrete path over the top.
This route was only about 20 km but a bit of an adventure anyway.
The rest was you standard curvy mountain roads.
The entrance to the beach on the other side of the mountain is thru the mountain via a tunnel and then a switch back road down to the coast. This is a nice small beach town with a smooth rock beach and still chilly water. There are a number of excursions out of here to even nicer deserted beaches, but we just chilled in the sunshine for the rest of the day.
Cala Ganone is in shooting distance to the ferry at Olbia in 110 km and 1hr 40 min away.
The ferry leaves every day at 12 30 for the 7 hour crossing to Civitivecchia.
We followed the signs to the Porto Touristica and then to Imbarchi! Here we checked in with the police who asked for our tickets and passports.
You are then directed to the pre boarding parking where we found only a few cars and several transport trucks waiting.
We were loaded first as usual and then directed to the upper deck. We were placed against one of the sides of the deck and the staff came over to say that we did not need to worry they would secure the bikes. They did a very good job.
On our huge cruise ship there were maybe 100 people. They have state rooms, but a hefty 150 euros! We slept in chairs in the lounge, ate our picnic lunch, and watched crazy Italian TV shows.
It was a very smooth sailing, but we did dock a bit late with all the coming and going from this busy port we have to wait our turn. It is amazing the small spaces these huge boats have to maneuver in here.
