Arrive at the top of Mt Vesuvius: Check. Now for the fun part.
I really struggled to find information about exactly what the bicycle paths were around Vesuvius – and the guided tours seemed to all be booked out until well into late July. I was really lacking some local knowledge but I eventually stumbled across the Trailforks site for the ‘Vesuvio Classic’ – so far so good!
To me, this looked simple enough – most mountain bike trails have an easily marked descent and as far as I was aware this was one of the most well resourced National Parks in Italy, due to all the government funding to ensure proper monitoring of Vesuvius as an active volcano. Plus its marked as a green trail, full descent the whole way – super easy ride the kind of which you can take kids on (seriously that’s what green means).
To my surprise though, looking around where the entrance to the track was marked on the map, I couldn’t see anything indicating the start of the green trail. All I saw was vague signs of track at the location the track was meant to start. Determined not to be defeated, I decided to start down one of the trails to investigate. Here’s some of the beautiful scenery I was greeted with.
However, for a green level track, it was incredibly thick – the terrain was difficult loose volcanic asphalt (no doubt from previous lava flows) littered with thick, dense flowers and scrub that had overgrown the path leaving little space to ride through without taking some battle damage. Below are some of the pics and some of the damage caused by riding through the thick bushland.
I actually couldn’t stop to photograph the thicker parts of the trail because it was intense and required me to just power through to get to the open spaces before taking a photo. There were some interesting stops on the way though with information on local flora and fauna, as well as some great views of the other side of the cone and other parts of Naples. I also saw some amazing lava flows that I had to navigate; truly a unique landscape for riding.
At this juncture I actually felt totally lost. I was confident knowing I could always turn around, but I also started to wonder by this point if I’d gotten in a little over my head. Maybe I really should have told people where I was or given an indication of what time I would be back. I fought back the fear – this is not the worst situation I’ve been in when it comes to wilderness survival after all. Plus I can see my destination below from this lookout – surely going down is just a matter of following the tracks. Also I hadn’t lost reception at this point either, so even though GPS was a bit sketchy up here (and in many places in the south of Italy, now that I think about it), I could still get a message out if necessary – no need to worry anyone just yet.
I was faced with a choice at this clearing as well, there were multiple pathways, including one that was marked. However the marking was for ‘La Valle D’Inferno’ or ‘The Valley of Hell’, with all the other pathways being unmarked.
In the last photo of the gallery above, my bike is resting next to the unsigned path I ended up choosing, purely because the direction it was traveling accords with my memory from the Trailforks information and because I wasn’t really feeling up to trying to traverse ‘The Valley of Hell’, especially because the trailforks maps didn’t really show a clear way down. So I set off, getting some great scenery along the way.
Eventually I came to a corner where the trail met with a bright white road. To my surprise, there was a group of English hikers there, stopping for a drink. I asked them how they got there and they replied that had followed this white road all the way up from the base of the mountain.
Right about now I realised how badly I’d messed this plan up – this was clearly the green trail that Trailforks had mentioned – somehow I missed the entrance from the top of the mountain completely. I mean sure – the descent down from here would be easy, and I’d seen some pretty unique landscape that I was unlikely to see – but I felt like a bit of an idiot – albeit an adventurous idiot.
From here, the rest of the ride down was such a breeze, I stopped infrequently to take in the view and get a shot from the pathway as I made my descent.
As expected, I then made it to the bottom. I had to slip past a bunch of park rangers and Carabinieri (military personnel serving as police) who gave me a surprised/bewildered look as though to say ‘what the hell is happening where did this guy come from’. I decided to whirl past them and set off back to Sorrento. Stay tuned for how the rest of the ride turns out in a future update.
When I got back to Sorrento I told the guy from the bike shop how hard I found it to find information on the trails at Vesuvius. He said to me (translating from Italian) ‘yes I think actually all the trails are closed for maintenance/danger’. I’m there thinking ‘oh now he tells me this – after I already went down’. I showed him the pictures above that I’d taken that day and he was positively jubilant and started showing the other patron in the bike shop and talking about all the flora present in the photos and the lava flows. ‘Hai passato una bella esperienza’ he exclaimed jubilantly – ‘You had a beautiful experience’ – well yes I guess, in many ways, I did.
Now, looking back on it, I thought at first I didn’t look hard enough at the top for the entrance to the track I intended to go down and therefore I must have gone down the wrong track. However, when I compare the maps found on OpenStreetMap (which look very familiar to me having been in the area and remembering well all the landmarks) and then the Trailforks map, I can see that I actually had followed the Trailforks path perfectly.
I wasn’t going crazy – the track just wasn’t properly maintained so I got an experience that was a little harder than the advertised ‘green level’ trail. So overall I feel pretty accomplished in having been able to do that despite it being closed. Overall a great experience that I don’t recommend – instead do a guided bike tour when its open and don’t be a silly numpty like me. Signing off for now!