Sardinia
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2. How, what and why?
MTB Sardinia happened by a mere chance. While surfing
the windsurfing web pages, I found a website that besides
windsurfing in Sardinia offered also a complete MTB guide
for Sardinia (www.sardegna.net).
And I did find trail maps of a couple of dozen MTB
routes. There was also some additional information about
the routes, so Sardinia instantly got to me.
Unfortunately the maps taken from the website were
hardly readable. They were scanned from a book guide Sole,
sale, salita (see Sardinia Info), as I
found out later. Dirk and Annet, bikers from Germany who
we met in Sardinia, managed to carry out quite a few tours
by using only these maps! Well, they admitted they
got truly lost a couple of times. Anyway, my acknowledgments
to the website sardegna.net for providing initial encouraging
information.
My search for the information continued intensively. I
found quite a few useful websites (see Sardinia
Info). But the real treasure was a website called Bike
Sardegna, totally dedicated to on-line description of
Sardinian MTB trails. And what a description! There were
more information that one could have wished for. The
website was actually a real on-line MTB guide with a lot
of content, over 70 pages in the print out version.
Besides introduction with general information about
Sardinia, there were detailed descriptions of 6 routes in Sarrabus
and 6 routes in Sulcis, which are mountain ranges east and west of
Cagliari respectively. Cagliari is the capital of
Sardinia located in the south.
A quick look at the table of all the routes convinced
me that the author was serious about off-road biking. The
average length of a route was 48 km with 1200 of the total
height
difference! Every description had a map of the region with
location of the route, a short general description, a
table with detailed information, a map of the route with
indicated type of the trails, a profile and of course
detailed description of the way. So, a very compete MTB
guide. Today, the website is available also in English and
German. There are now over 20 routes, also in other
regions of Sardinia.
Having such a perfect MTB guide with described ideal
one day tours, me and my wife Ana were ready to visit
Sardinia.
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Ascent
towards immense Gennargentu (route18
in
Sole, Sale, Salita guide)
1.
Introducton
2.
How, what and why?
3.
Roberto
4.
The snake
5.
Windmills
6.
Seven brothers
7.
Codula di Sisine
8.
So long
9.
Sardinia INFO
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It
is good to know that for a real OFF-ROAD
bike riding abroad it is not enough to have
an automobile map, even if it is an
excellent map of Sardinia from Marco Polo
publishing company. Not even Italian
military topographic maps I.G.M. in the
scale of 1:25000 are not enough, since there
are always time and financial limitations
preventing you from exploring the land as
you can at home.
A good solid cross country MTB trail, which has got all
the elements that inspire you - nice views, singletracks, some technical
sections, etc., is virtually impossible to
just find accidentally by riding along. All
the good trails are hard to find. That is why
MTB guides made by natives are worth their weight in gold.
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