Beside the Seaside

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In Which I Join The Gang

June 22, 2008 by Mike

Paola

Route: Marina de Camerota - Policastro - Sapri - Praia a Mare - Paola

I've stopped for the night in the first workaday, boring town I've seen in a week.

That'll teach me to listen to the locals and ask advice about what to see and where to go, eh?

How did I get here? Quickly -- and with a broad smile on my face.

Great roads today: out of Marina de Camerota, I took a wrong turn to Camerota itself -- as in so many parts of Europe, the inhabitants of old lived away from the coast and up in the hills in more defendable positions. Which have now been completely superseded by their ports or seaside offshoots, now that pirates and Aragonese warships are less of a threat, on the whole.

Camerota town has an air of having been forgotten and left behind, compared with the bright lights and bustle down on the coast. And that's because.. it has been. Great views, a stunning road, lovely architecture -- nothing to compete with the Great God Beach.

And like I said -- for my story, it was a wrong turn. I really wanted to get to Lentiscola -- one hill top over from Camerota, the two towns have been visible to each other for millennia, but they're on either side of a steep, dark valley.

To get to Lentiscola, and the road round the coast, I had to retrace my steps all the way to Marina de Camerota where, so narrow and fiddly are the roads, the signposted route follows a figure-of-eight above the old port in order to get me onto the right road.

And it WAS the right road. Oh man.. this was PERFECT. Switchbacks, curves, steep and austere, huge views back down the road and out to sea. A slalom course. I scribbled "Zig-a-zig-AHHH" on the road map as a reminder to myself. Zig-a-zig and zoomy-zoom-zoom. Uphill. On the bike. Besidetheseaside. Molto grazie.

Onwards and upwards.. and downwards. Descending from a height (and a wonderful series of bends) to the town of San Giovanni a Piro, where I stopped for a coffee and wishedwishedwished I had the guts to ask the old men sitting in the sunshine on the wall outside the cafe if I could take their photograph. Such character. The lives they've led. Those faces.

All in the shadow of Monte Bulgheria, which I would see for the next hour or so in my rear-view mirrors. The crisp alpine air made the mountain seem close enough to reach out and touch.

There's a sign in San Giovanni: "450 metres above sea level." It's about a mile inland, though the road winds down from here.. a captivating, tumbling descent. Can you tell I like it here? I've been house-hunting from the saddle for the last couple of days.

But I can't tell you if or when I find a perfect little house any more: one of my good friends, who checks the site out every now and then, is going out with a property developer. If she tips him off and he swoops before I can get my act together... ach, it doesn't bear thinking about.

But I noted a jazz club in a small bar in Scario -- one of my key criteria being the existence of some form of musical life, remember. And further round the coast I again marked the map, with three arrows pointing around the foothills of the little mountains of Ceraso and Palladino, la Serra and Coccovello, and the tiny communities of Rotondella and Acqua Fredda and Cersuta:
"PERFECT"

Round the Gulf of Policastro.

Doesn't that sound great? It is. An excellent ride, more giant slalom than slalom, now. The kind of curves even I can take at 50mph. The view from out at sea is special too, I am told - grottoes and caves at sea level, and these hills and mountains that plunge so fast and true into the turquoise sea. Plenty of activity on the sea -- all motorboats, and most of them speedboats -- the Italians at sea as impatient as they are on the road -- which makes for a lovely picture -- the boats, their trailing wakes of pure white spume so distinct against the blue of the sea -- and all the crap littering the side of the road:

Well done, Italians. The perfection of your heritage spoiled by the people who get to live here with no respect for what's around them. Again.

Lunch: it being a Sunday, I treated myself to a slap-up lunch. Well, a plate of spag bol and a bottle of water.

"And which wine would you like with that?", my waiter asked.

"Err, no wine thanks," I managed. I pointed to the helmet sitting on the table. "I'm on the bike, you see. No alcohol."

The Italian for 'Yeah, whatever, you strange person. Everyone drinks at least a bottle with lunch' is an irritated shrug of the shoulders combined with a distant, disdainful glance down the nose.

This waiter has it down to a fine art.

Today I saw the results of the fourth serious traffic accident of the trip.

To be more precise: after 30,000-odd miles riding through England, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Roosia, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Roosia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Roosia, Poland, Germany, Denmark, Germany, Holland, England, Holland, Belgium (briefly), France, Spain, Portugal, Spain, France and less than half of Italy, I saw the results of the fourth serious traffic accident of the trip and they've all been in Italy.

If anyone had been injured or killed in this one, they'd been swept up and cleared away by the time I got there. No immediate, visible effect on the driving habits of the ubiquitous Indestructible Italian Driver, either.

So I'm smiling.. and I arrived here quickly. Oh yes. After San Giovanni, after Policastro, after Sapri, after Santa Venere and Maratea, I found myself shooting past Praia a Mare on the highway, the A18, in tandem with a big BMW bike. It's been a while since I've seen anyone on two wheels other than Vespas and Ducati Monsters (basically, nothing like me) and it was good to get in the groove with another bike. But all the time I was looking down from the highway, all bridges and overpasses, looking at the curly, curvy coast road below me to the right. Eventually, I could resist no longer. I peeled off the A18 with a mental 'ciao' to my BMW buddy.

Cue a mesmerising 25 minute ride back to Praia a Mare along the windiest road ever. And then all the way back again.. 50 fantastic minutes of pure biking that the BMW had missed by shooting through on the highway in something a little less than five minutes.

And it seems that the great god of biking (Barry Sheen?) was smiling on me today, because as i returned to the highway to continue my southward journey, I found myself in convoy with not one other bike, but 12 (OK, one of them was a scooter, and soon got dropped) -- a dirty dozen that streaked through town after town, engines roaring, leaving fair maidens on every corner gazing in our wake with a mixture of pride, admiration and pure lust: "Wow.. bikers."

*cough*

OK, OK.. but there were 12 of us, riding along in a line, three or four pairs of bikes, the rest of us indies. One was wearing a Union Jack t-shirt, so we managed a smile and a wave, but most didn't manage any kind of gesture. I'm still struggling to get used to this: in every other country, bikers acknowledge each other. (Unless the other guy's on a Harley.)

For 30 miles and more, I rode in the pack. Speed is a drug. That feeling of being in a 'gang', too. (And of having the best bike.. and the biggest panniers.. and the best riding line.) But I was missing too many cute-looking seaside sights: Cirella, Diamante, Marina de Belvedere, Cittadella del Capo, Fuscaldo.

I pulled off the road and let my brothers and sisters of the road disappear over the crest of the next hill. (They'll all be accountants and shelf-stackers. I'm not kidding myself that we have anything in common other than these two wheels that bind us to the road.. and together.)

And that's how I reached Paola. A old man sitting at a petrol station a few hours ago recommended it. A very interesting man: get him talking on the subject of his travels in Europe and southeast Asia if you're ever in the area.

Oh, and ask him why the hell he recommended Paola. Boring McDullsville.

Beside the Seaside

In Which I Join The Gang

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