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I woke up to a cold fog, and couldn’t wait to get back on my bike and start moving. I was in the Pontine Marshes, and the Romans were in a hurry to get through, too, when they built the via Appia.

Here the Appian Way shoots forward in a perfectly straight line.  the Romans probably could have established a winding route along sections of dry ground, but instead they pounded strong pilings into the water to support the road where they wanted it to go.

Two straight lines of Umbrella pines flank the road on either side, and I wonder if the Romans originally planted pines as shade for their travelers. Throughout my trip, these trees always seemed abundant along the roadside, and whenever I was unsure of the way I could go up on a hill and look for the clear green lines cutting across the land.

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The Pontine marshes are drained now, and mostly used for agriculture. A drainage ditch runs along the road just beyond the trees.

It would have been easy to die here. Trucks emerged from the early morning fog, and there was no room for them to pass, and no space to get out of the way. The trees and bushes grow up flush against the roadway in most places. Lots of flowers and other monuments to the fallen dot the roadway.

I could have taken a parallel route about 10 miles south, through a national park. I recommend this to anyone else. But I’m a purist, and I wanted to follow the Via Appia as faithfully as possible.

Luckily, some of the most considerate drivers I’ve seen in my life drove the Appian Way. They would slow down and follow me, sometimes for as long as 15 minutes, until it was safe to pull over and let them go by. People are generally in less of a hurry in Italy, even on the Romans’ most important highway.

Beyond the thin ditch of water and the umbrella pines, endless pastures, crop fields, stone walls, vineyards and olive groves roll out among the occasional milestone or chunk of marble. It’s as if nothing has changed over the centuries The cars are an anachronism, as if some mischievous god dumped a layer of asphalt over the whole thing and let the drivers in as a great circus to entertain the masses.

Long before you get to Terracina, you see the Temple of Jupiter Anxur at the top of Mount Sant’Angelo.

I was destined to get to know Jupiter very well (to be continued…)

Riding out of Rome on an old Raleigh 10-speed, you’re going to feel like a gladiator that just walked out into the ring. It’s a battle getting out.

In fact, you are in a ring, the Grande Raccordo Annulare, the highway that circles the outskirts of Rome. Several main roads cut across this ring and merge in the center of the city, dividing all the area into wedges like a giant pizza.

I almost became road pizza. There are places where the Appian Way has no shoulder and there’s a sheer stone wall on each side. So you literally can’t get out of the way of a moving vehicle.

Eventually you’ll reach the Porta San Sebastiano, the port of St. Sebastian in the Aurelian Wall. If you happen to be there between 9 and 2, look for a door with a buzzer on the right. If you push the button they’ll let you into a museum dedicated to Roman engineering. But the best part is you can climb up to the battlements on top of the wall and walk along it for a good kilometer or so. Watch out for Sabines, Samnites, and Barbarians!

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A bit further on you’ll be at the Catacombs, and you can cut through the catacombs of St. Calixto to get out of the traffic for a while. This takes longer, but you’ll be looking at gardens instead of stone walls, and you’ll have clean air and some shade.

On my trip I got past the catacombs and headed into the via Appia park, where the original road bumps along for almost 10 miles, past fields of wildflowers and crumbling Roman ruins. This park is the history buff’s dream!

If you go there you’ll see the tomb of Cecilia Metella that looks like a castle, the stone skeleton of an early Church, aqueducts and endless monuments to people who died centuries ago. You can stop at the “Domine Quo Vadis” church and see footprints in the marble–thought by true believers to be the footprints of either Christ or St. Peter. You’ll see the ruins of old houses and villas and you might even get a wheel caught in the ruts left by hundreds of thousands of carts and wagons.

When the Appian way hit a dead end (actually the route was still in a straight line but it was closed off by walls and fences), I took a few side streets that I knew would lead to SS7, the modern highway equivalent of via Appia.

There was a strong stench of sulphur coming from a fountain at the intersection. The water was pierced with tiny bubbles and tasted tart. An old man told me these natural minerals are good for the health. I’m still alive.

I had lunch in a small park with a picket fence. A sign on the fence informed me that this was “A place clean and civil.”
The afternoon was a whirlwind of vineyards and fields of crops and a huge viaduct at Ariccia.

Just outside Genzano, another long section of the original roadbed was exposed, and I followed this past still more crumbling marble pillars.

When Seneca traveled the Appian Way, he often camped, saying, “The mattress lies upon the ground, and I upon the mattress.”

I ended my first day the same way, pitching my tent in an empty field.

Dottore Pascuale Grello was incredulous when I showed up at his office unannounced one morning and told him what I wanted to do.

“Impossibile!” he insisted, pronouncing the word with long vowels: eem-poh-SEEEEEE-bee-lay!

Nobody knows how many millions of nobles, senators, philosophers, soldiers, merchants, prisoners, slaves, poets and bandits have followed the route of the Appian Way from Rome to Brindisi or vice versa. They’ve been doing it for 1,300 years, on foot, in litters, by wagon, buggy, horse, pony, mule, and more recently in cars, motorcycles and trucks.

Surely one enthusiastic biker could make the journey.

Dr. Grello is, as far as I can tell, the chief archeologist for the Parco Reggionnale dell’Appia Antica on the outskirts of Rome. If you try to sneak out of Rome behind the Coloseum, through the ancient walls at the Port of St. Sebastian, you’re at the start of the Appian Way, and you’ll soon see these park headquarters on your right.

Even if you’re not planning to ride the via Appia by bicycle, if you’re in Rome this park is well worth stomping around a bit. They close the road to motor vehicles on Sunday, and you can usually find someone offering bikes for rent near the Colosseum.

I went to the park headquarters and asked in uncertain Italian if I could talk to the leader. A young woman barely set down her lipstick-stained cigarette as she directed me to Dr. Grello.

When I explained that I wanted to bike the entire length of the Appian Way, and he finished assuring me that it could not be done, he asked why I would ever want to do such a thing.

This is the hardest question to answer, even in English. I did my best to explain my fascination with the Mediterranean, ancient history, and the desperate need we have (I think) in the USA, to rediscover some common roots. Archeologists will never finish scraping the ancient world out of the soil and gluing it back together, but there’s always still an energy you can feel when you’re alone in these ancient places.

I want to see marble columns rising out of misty fields in the dawn, and remember what the Romans forgot when they became too powerful as a civilization and too weak as individuals, the power the barbarians came to understand when the Romans had forgotten and the Greeks were just a memory.

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When you travel by bicycle you don’t just “see” things behind the glass of a museum display or a windshield. You feel the air and the moisture and the contours of the land. You’re exposed to the people and the energy of the place. You drink in the nectar of the world, and anything is possible.

Halfway through my rant, Dr. Grello understood. You could see it in his face. And here’s a secret to communicating with Italians. Even if you don’t know the right words, if you speak with passion and move your hands around in big circles most Italians can read your mind and they’ll usually produce whatever you want on the spot.

My new archeologist savior was already pulling out topo maps, old photos and drawings, and giving me a stream of directions and names and numbers in rapid Italian. He told me that a lot of the Appian Way was on private property, covered over by new roads, even freeways. He mentioned floods and swamps and mountains. Also many places where people simply don’t know where the via Appia ran.

I frantically scribbled as much as I could understand in my notebook. I wasn’t looking for perfection, just adventure and fun and new learning and experience. If I couldn’t retrace all of the Appian Way, I would still see most of it, do the best I could.

Dr. Grello assured me once again that I was attempting something impossible. The he shook his head, shook my hand, and solemnly wished me good luck.

If you’d like to receive free email tips on traveling by bicycle, send a request to Jacob@BicycleFreedom.com.

This content is copyright 2008 by Jacob Bear.

“In Appia is my salvation,” I wrote in a journal entry shortly before I rode diagonally across the southern half of Italy, from Rome to Brindisi, following the historic route of the via Appia as accurately as possible.

Why do we make these trips, anyway? You’ve got your own personal reasons when you travel by bicycle. The more obvious benefits, like saving money, saving gas, cutting pollution and possibly improving your health are just icing on the cake. That’s not why you really do it.

Maybe you’ve been through something like this. I was in a confusing period in my life, where everything I wanted or thought I needed was either too easy or completely out of reach.

In times like that you need something to take you outside the box you’ve built around your life. You need challenge and adventure, the possibility of romance, a little bit of danger and a lot of fun. Touring southern Italy by bicycle, riding down the Appian way, gave me all of that and more. That’s why we do these things. That’s probably why you’re reading this.

Either you’ve done this route or something similar, or you have a craving for it. I’ll tell you the whole story on this blog, in little installments. You can follow along, get good route notes, and hear the tale, warts and all. “In Appia is my salvation,” I wrote, and I was right.

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I’ve been getting a lot of emails (as well as a few comments added to old posts) from people wanting tips and advice on biking in southern Italy. Some of you are riding (or even hiking!) the Via Appia, and it’s a shame that it’s so hard to get a group of people together when our schedules, wills, and finances are all in alignment.

We’re basically all doing prettymuch the same ride, just not at the same time. So… (more…)

Rome has a new experimental system that combines GPS and the internet to bring walkers a whole mess of useful data in your cell phone: models of traffic, crowds, and even hot spots where a lot of people are gathering.

You can find out where the crowds are, and decide if you want to be where the action is, or whether you want to get as far away as possible. Not only will you be able to find the bus stop, you’ll know when the next bus is coming and whether it’s likely to be crowded or not.

This device is meant for drivers and walkers, but why not bikers too? Decide for yourself:

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/11/27/mobile_mapping/

If you’re Canadian, British, Australian or from any English-speaking county other than the United States you can probably ignore this post.

But if you’re from the USA, and you want to tour Italy by bicycle, you may be worried about how much (or how little) your dollars will buy when you exchange them for euros.

Good news. When it comes to bike touring, you’re in a separate category of travel. Here’s why.

Bike touring is inherently cheaper than most other kinds of travel. You spend more time in small towns where things are less expensive, and you have more options because of your mobility (think of the typical backpacker who has to rely on bus and train schedules).

I would add that bike tours tend to involve more camping, but the truth is you really might want to stay in hotels and eat in restaurants. Good news here, too.

You see, in the late 1990s a lot of new tour operations opened up in Italy with the intention of serving middle class Americans made rich by the dotcom bubble. The dollar was strong, flights were cheap and convenient in the pre-9/11 era, and middle class tourists swarmed to Italy. (I was a tour manager in Rome, and it was possibly the best time ever to be an American living abroad.)

Now those hotels, restaurants, pensioni and other services are struggling for new and different clientele. When you show up there, you are a rare and welcome guest. You can’t expect the prices to be lower, but you’ll get a lot of bang for your buck.

Italians don’t treat you like a customer, but a guest. On recent bike tours in Italy I’ve been invited to dinner, taken on tours of small Italian villages, and offered lots of amenities for what was only a slightly pricey hotel room.

And this is part of the joy of bike riding on tour. You get all kinds of unexpected gifts and surprises from the locals.

Food also gives you a new level of class when you tour Italy by bicycle. You may not be able to eat in a Euro-grade restaurant on a dollar budget, but you can get fine bread and cheese from a deli, and then take it somewhere exotic with your bike.

Sit up on a wall or in the courtyard of a castle while you feast on wine, cold cuts, cheese and grilled eggplant doused in olive oil. Have a picnic in a green field dotted with wild flowers, as you lean against a crumbling aqueduct. I’ve done this, and I’ll do it again soon. No matter what the exchange rate happens to be.

If anything, this might be the best time for touring Italy by bicycle if you’re creative and adventurous. And you are, or you wouldn’t be thinking about this trip, would you?

I made a small discovery this week. And it ties in with my plans to bike the Appian Way in southern Italy. I’ll tell you more about it in a minute, but first you need some background.

With all the air pollution, even in rural Italy, you need your antioxidants. An Italian study compared the antioxidant effects of eating fish, garlic, vegetables, red wine, and dark chocolate.

The good news: the wine and chocolate tied for first place.

Other things being equal, the researchers made the conclusion that if you drink a glass of red wine with dinner you might be lowering your cholesterol even more than the guy eating five helpings of broccoli.

By the way, when I told an Italian about the health benefits of drinking a glass a day of red wine, he disagreed. He said a glass a day of red wine was definitely bad for you because “you need to have two or three glasses.”

Secrets of the Aglianico in southern Italy

The real adventure began when I reached Benevento on my first bike tour in southern Italy. This was roughly the halfway point of the via Appia. It was also the first place off the map–from this point on I didn’t really know where I was going except in a very general way. It was the beginning of serendipity, lots of unexpected adventures, wrong turns and bad weather, as well as friends in the most unlikely places.

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Benevento is also the origin of a little-known wine called Beneventano, made from the aglianico grape.

This strong-flavored beverage (the experts would call it “full-bodied,” I think) might be neutralizing ozone in my lungs on every bike ride. What I know for sure is that it has a lot of sentimental value because it reminds me of that first bike tour.

So imagine my excitement, back here in Los Angeles, when I found 3 bottles of Beneventano at a local store.

I served some to a friend who is an expert on food and wine. He said it was good quality, of complex flavor, and added a lot of other jargon about the “nose” and the “finish” with words like “legs” and “bouquet” thrown in for good measure.

“Where did you get this?” he asked me. I was too embarrassed to tell him, but I’ll tell you.

It came from Trader Joe’s. They still carry it every now and then, but the quality seems to vary. The last few batches were only slightly better than the citrus degreaser I use on my chain. But the bottle I opened last week was decent.

Southern Italy’s “most impressive grape”

This week I looked up the lore of the aglianico grape in The Wine Bible. There’s not much to say about it, but it was introduced by the Greeks and is among “the south’s most impressive grape varieties.” The Italians grow it in the volcanic soil left over from the eruptions of Mount Vesuvius, and its flavor carries the long and complex history of the Mediterranean.

The reason I’m bringing all of this up is that if you join me on the bike tour of southern Italy, you’ll get to taste some great wines that are unknown outside the regions of Campania, Basilicata, and Puglia.

Southern Italy lacks the well-known and large-scale wine industry of the north. Most wine is produced and sold to the locals, and people outside the region rarely get to try it.

This is another good reason for a bike tour. You can find out more about it here.

By the way, I don’t know the source for the food/wine antioxidant study. I saw it on a cooking program on TV at the airport while I was waiting for a flight to Italy in 2005. Bike every day, be safe, and eat your chocolate and your vegetables.

WARNING: This information is not to be construed as nutritional advice. Whatever beneficial compounds may go with it, alcohol is still a poison. Drink responsibly. Don’t drink and bike, because you will probably suffer serious injury or death, and you will most certainly look like an idiot. Save that bottle for the hot tub or the campfire, where you can share it with your friends.

A lot of people have been asking what it’s going to cost to trek across the via Appia from Rome to Brindisi next spring.

I posted this on a separate page that I thought would just be for touring Italy by bicycle, but I’m still learning WordPress and the FAQs page is hard to find, even for me.

So I’ll be putting up answers to the questions I get every couple of days. If you have another question, just leave a comment and I’ll get back to you.

Anyway, the money thing. The good news is southern Italy is cheaper than the north.

When a mechanic in Capua charged me 5 euros to replace a bunch of broken spokes on my last trip (check out the picture!) I misunderstood and thought he said twenty-five. As I handed him a few bills, he shook his head and said, “No, non siamo a Roma.” (We’re not in Rome.)

Everywhere I went, I was surprised at the low cost (compared to Rome and Florence) of most things. But if you (more…)

Via Appia is a hidden bicycle touring treasure. It’s easy enough for beginner cyclists to handle, and exotic enough to prove a high adventure for advanced cyclists.

We’ll be going there next spring, and you can go to the Touring Italy by Bicycle category to find out more.

Many sections of the original ancient Roman Appian Way, or via Appia in Italian, are still intact. The first 10 miles or so are an archeological park that starts at the very gates of ancient Rome, near the Colosseum.

After that, long sections sit unnoticed amid green fields and wildflowers. Sometimes a modern road slips by just a few yards away, but most motorists are going to fast to look closely at the flowers. That is why we ride.

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In some places, the Via Appia was built so well that modern engineers have paved over it. Major highways follow the course of Via Appia, giving you easy access to fallen pillars, old ruins, charming hill towns and castles. Driving lets you cover more ground, but you miss a lot of detail and you’re isolated from a lot of the sites and sounds, not to mention the people. That is why we ride.

This is an important, often neglected, piece of Western history. Via Appia was the main artery from Rome to Brindisi, the port that gave the Romans access to the Southern and Eastern edges of the Empire.

Augustus followed this route when he pursued Mark Antony and Cleopatra. Many of the indigenous tribes of the Italian peninsula made their last stands against the Romans along this corridor. Murderers and bandits did their most evil deeds on this highway. Poets and philosophers found inspiration and adventure here. Soldiers and gladiators marched to victory and doom on the Via Appia.

The ancient Romans followed the Via Appia on foot, or at best with the help of mules or horses. I want to experience this as they did. Important leaders built their monuments and tombs here. The rich lined the Via Appia with their villas. This place deserves to be remembered, honored, or at least understood. It is the key to so many other things. That is why we’re following the Via Appia on a bike.

If you want to come along, leave a comment or send an email to jacob “at” BicycleFreedom.com

If you want more information, look at the other posts in the category “touring Italy by bicycle” or ask your question as a comment. You can also find out more on this page.