The Reventino-Savuto bike route offers an immersive route into the heart of Calabria, inspiring a true voyage to discover lands unexplored by traditional tourism routes. It is not a journey for ordinary cycle tourists but an experience for bike-voyagers in search of authenticity.
Over 150 kilometres, endless curves, daring descents and ascents, the Reventino-Savuto bike route is a small paradise for those who love discovering the world by bicycle, inspired by slowness.
The map of the bike route follows a route that mirrors the character of a land of a thousand moods and unpredictable character. On paper, it seems to have no logical sense, but in actual fact it marks the stages of a voyage of discovery to the most intimate, solitary and reserved Calabria. The tourism that consumes all and disrupts everything never arrived here: valleys, mountains and ancient stones seem to turn their backs on the sea, which appears as an endless blue backdrop. The wrinkles of this Calabria do not need a facelift to show it differently from what it is, namely a fragment of the world destined for travellers in search of authenticity. The Reventino-Savuto bike route penetrates the silent world of the Sila where the breath of the wind tells the stories of a human landscape instilling the spirit of the Grand Tour: “the desire to explore unknown places to broaden one’s knowledge and learn how to live.” The bike route has a twofold significance: it reveals an authentic world, pursuing mountains, valleys, rivers, forests, villages and people; and then it wanders in a dimension suspended between past and future, revealing the face of a Calabria whose roots are in an ancient world, with views extending towards the world to come. The Reventino mountains are the limbs of the Sila chain stretching towards Catanzaro, and the Savuto is the vein of water symbolising the source of life for populations that have lived here since Neolithic times.
This path is a splendid deviation from the regional route, the Ciclovia dei Parchi (Parks bike route), which crosses the ridge of endless Calabrian expressions, from Pollino to Aspromonte, running through the Sila and Serre ranges. By uniting the section of the Parks bike route that flanks the southern side of the Sila mountains with the Reventino-Savuto bike route, the journey becomes a magical ring of about 200 kilometres and 4,000 metres of vertical ascent: an ideal destination for trained cyclists, and for contemporary cycle tourists who can beat the force of gravity by means of handy e-bikes.
The road seems to lose its way in the folds of an area that wishes to shield its intimacy. The Parks bike route crosses the enchanted forests of the Sila towards Catanzaro, and before Gimigliano it meets the Reventino-Savuto bike route, which, running through Cicala, veers towards Carlopoli and Panettieri, two villages united in an embrace right on the border between the provinces of Catanzaro and Cosenza. The Abbey of Corazzo is a silent cathedral of stone and sky. Nearby, there are scents of ancient breads, and curds soon to be transformed into cheese. An exciting passage through Serrastretta, the city of chairs, and the mystical beech forest of Mount Condrò: a dream immersed in the wooded tranquillity of Decollatura before breathing Mediterranean air, vineyards and olive groves between Conflenti and Motta Santa Lucia. Pedivigliano, Scigliano and Carpanzano are a sequence of memorable bends for those who pedal with their heads held high, flirting with the force of gravity until the Agrifoglio pass, where the descent towards the industrious Soveria Mannelli begins. From here the route climbs up again towards Bianchi, Colosimi and the Parenti plateaus to Bocca di Piazza, a miniature Tibet of wide open spaces that heralds the ridge and the return to the Parks bike route.