Out of Catania and back to Catania. Across the Strait to Aspromonte, up the spine of Calabria to the Pollino, down the Tyrrhenian coast and home over Etna. Everything included.
The week starts and ends at the same door. You cross the Strait of Messina on the first morning and again on the sixth afternoon.
Departures are on Sunday morning from Catania. The group rides north on the A18 with Etna on the left, boards the Caronte & Tourist ferry at Messina and is in Calabria before lunch. The crossing takes 20 minutes, with departures every 40 minutes around the clock, so there is nothing to book in advance.
Both ferry crossings are part of the route, not an add-on: they are the only two moments of the week when the engines are off and the maps come out.
Return: Villa San Giovanni → Messina on Friday afternoon, then the Peloritani ridge road to Taormina. Saturday closes the loop over Etna and back into Catania.
Documents: Driving licence, vehicle registration, green card. The whole loop stays within Italy — no additional documents required.
Sunday · A18 northbound · ~100 km · ~1h motorway
Caronte & Tourist · 20 min · every 40 min, 24/7
Aspromonte · Serre · Sila · Pollino · Costa degli Dei
Friday afternoon · then the Peloritani ridge to Taormina
€5–10 motorcycle + rider, each way. Paid at the gate, no reservation needed. Both crossings are at the rider’s expense on Self Drive.
1,600 km from Catania back to Catania, through 3 national parks in 7 stages. Select a day above to highlight its leg.
Catania → Gambarie d’Aspromonte. A18 · Taormina · Messina · ferry · Villa San Giovanni · SS184 · Santo Stefano · Aspromonte National Park. The week opens at sea level and ends at 1,300m.
Briefing and full tank. North on the A18 with Etna over your left shoulder.
The motorway runs between the volcano and the sea. First sight of the Calabrian coast across the water.
Caronte & Tourist. Departures every 40 minutes around the clock, 20 minutes across the Strait.
Back on the mainland. Fill up here — stations thin out above Santo Stefano.
The SS184 climbs 1,200m in 25 km of hairpins through chestnut and beech.
Overnight inside the park. On a clear evening the Strait and Etna are both visible from the piazza.
Charcoal-grilled kid with wild herbs. Maccarruni al ferretto with black pork ragù — Aspromonte black pork is a Slow Food Presidium.
Savuto Rosso Riserva, Odoardi. Magliocco and Nerello blend — structure suited to the evening, mature tannins. From the Savuto valley, virtually unknown outside Calabria.
Polsi is a Marian sanctuary deep in the Aspromonte interior. Not a tourist site — a place of active popular devotion, reachable only on foot or via fifteen kilometres of unpaved road.
Carmelo is seventy-two and comes from Africo, one of the most isolated villages in Italy — evacuated in 1953 after a landslide, rebuilt on lower ground. He has known Polsi since childhood. He talks about the sanctuary, the history of Africo, and the territory as it really is. An uncomfortable and necessary conversation.
Gambarie → Camigliatello Silano. SS183 · Delianuova · SS713 Traversale delle Serre · Serra San Bruno · Taverna · Sila Grande. The longest day of forest on the trip: three mountain ranges in one ride.
Full tank before departure. North along the Aspromonte ridge.
Western gate of Aspromonte National Park. Pietra Cappa: an 80m granite monolith, the largest in southern Europe.
Historic Carthusian monastery, founded 1091. The SS713 Traversale delle Serre runs through beech forest almost the whole way.
Birthplace of Mattia Preti, the “Cavalier Calabrese.” Six of his original works hang in the civic museum. Last reliable station before the Sila.
Overnight at 1,272m in the heart of the Sila Grande. Mountain cuisine, pine forest all around.
Pitta ’mpigliata — Calabrian pastry spirals with walnuts, raisins, honey and cinnamon. Pasta con le sarde alla calabrese. Wine: Cirò Rosato, Librandi.
Kid alla silana slow-cooked in a wood oven with potatoes and oregano. Tagliatelle with wild boar ragù. Pitta ’mpigliata with wild mulberries.
Cirò Rosso Riserva, ’A Vita. Pure Gaglioppo riserva — the classic pairing for Sila game. A near-extinct native Calabrian variety with fine tannins.
In Taverna, a village lost in the folds of the Serre, six original paintings by Mattia Preti hang in a civic museum that most Italians have never heard of. Preti painted for the cathedrals of Malta and Naples, but he never forgot where he came from.
Giuseppe is a retired schoolteacher who has spent forty years studying Preti’s work. He is not a museum guide. He is a man who believes that great art happened here, and that it matters. He walks you through the paintings with the intensity of someone sharing a personal secret.
Camigliatello Silano → Civita. Lago Cecita · Giganti della Sila · Acri · Bisignano · Crati Valley · Saracena · Pollino National Park. From the pines of the Sila to an Albanian village on the lip of a canyon.
Full tank before departure. East towards Lake Cecita.
A stand of Calabrian black pines over four hundred years old and 45m tall, protected since 1987. Twenty minutes on foot among them.
Down into the Crati Valley. Fill up here — the climb north has little coverage.
Medieval village at the gates of Pollino. Home of Moscato di Saracena DOC, a passito made by perhaps a dozen producers.
An Arbëreshë village founded by Albanian refugees in the 15th century, still speaking their language. Perched on the lip of the Raganello gorge, with the Ponte del Diavolo below.
Sila chestnut honey on dark bread — bitter and persistent, strong character. Caciocavallo Silano DOP, the only DOP cheese of Calabria. Order it the evening before.
Morzello cosentino — braised pork offal with chilli, a nose-to-tail dish from the peasant tradition. Pasta e patate alla calabrese. Wine: Terre di Cosenza Bianco, Ferrocinto.
Six in the morning. The lake is still. Francesco has worked as a ranger in Sila National Park for twenty-two years. He takes us on a forty-minute walk to a point that appears on no published map.
Wolf tracks in the mud. The structure of an eight-hundred-year-old forest explained by someone who has walked it every season of his adult life. Not a guided tour. A conversation with someone who knows this place better than anyone else.
Civita → Morano Calabro → Piano Ruggio → Civita. Raganello · Castrovillari · Campotenese · Rotonda. The van stays parked. A full day inside Italy’s largest national park, back to the same bed.
The Raganello gorge cuts 400m below the village. The Devil’s Bridge spans it on a single medieval arch.
Stone houses stacked up a cone beneath a Norman castle, one of the Borghi più belli d’Italia. Bernardino Cenni’s polyptych and a Pietro Bernini statue in the Collegiata.
A high plain at 1,050m inside the park, cultivated with lavender. The SS19 crosses it dead straight.
Loricato pines, the Bosnian pines that grow nowhere else in Italy, standing on the rim. On a clear day the Tyrrhenian is visible from the belvedere.
Headquarters of Pollino National Park, 192,565 hectares — the largest in Italy. Last station before the road back.
Back to the same hotel. The only evening of the week with nothing to pack.
Ancient-grain sourdough bread with oil and salt. Fresh sheep’s ricotta with sulla honey — a wild legume honey unique to Pollino. Caciocavallo if ordered the evening before.
In one of the ancient hill towns of Pollino, you enter a stone oven that has been firing since before anyone can remember. A baker kneads heritage wheat dough the way it was done a hundred years ago. You participate. You get your hands dirty. You wait for it to bake. You eat it there, with new-press olive oil and local pecorino.
No performance. No audience. Just flour, fire, and a person who has done this every morning of their life.
Civita → Tropea. Castrovillari · Mormanno · Maratea · Praia a Mare · SS18 · Pizzo · Costa degli Dei. The longest day and the easiest riding: coast road almost the whole way.
Full tank. West across the Pollino towards the Tyrrhenian.
Western gate of the Pollino, back in Basilicata. The road drops from 800m to the sea in 30 km.
The only town in Lucania on the Tyrrhenian. Cristo Redentore, a 21m statue on Monte San Biagio, and Cala Jannita below. Breathtaking views.
Back into Calabria on the SS18. Easy coastal riding, stations everywhere.
Murat’s castle above the bay and the tartufo di Pizzo, invented here in 1952. Entering the Costa degli Dei.
Overnight on the cliff. Santa Maria dell’Isola sits on its own rock below the town, with the Aeolian Islands on the horizon.
Baccalà alla lucana with crusco pepper. Lamb with Pollino herbs. Lagane e ceci — fresh Lucanian pasta impossible to find outside this region.
Aglianico del Vulture Superiore, Cantine del Notaio. Structured red from the volcanic soils of Monte Vulture — the defining wine of Basilicata.
Tropea → Taormina. Capo Vaticano · Nicotera · Palmi · Bagnara · Scilla · Villa San Giovanni · ferry · Peloritani ridge. Back to Sicily the long way round, over the mountains instead of the motorway.
Granite headland at the tip of the Costa degli Dei. The lighthouse road ends at a belvedere over Stromboli.
Calabria’s wildest coastline. Fill up at Palmi. Traditional swordfish hunting with the feluca boats.
Ancient fishing village, Castello Ruffo perched above the sea, views toward Charybdis. The Siren of Calabria.
Via Lungomare Cenide. Caronte ferry to Messina: 20 minutes, departures every 40 minutes, 24/7.
Instead of the A18, the ridge road above Messina. The Tyrrhenian on one side, the Ionian on the other, for 40 km.
Last night of the loop, above the bay of Giardini-Naxos, with Etna filling the window to the south.
Stocco alla mammolese — stockfish with potatoes, olives and chilli, the signature dish of Mammola. Pesce spada alla scillese, swordfish from the Strait.
Taormina → Catania. Linguaglossa · Piano Provenzana · Mareneve · Zafferana Etnea · Rifugio Sapienza · Etna Park. The last climb is the highest of the week, on a mountain that keeps rebuilding its own roads.
Full tank at Fiumefreddo. Inland towards the north face of Etna.
Gateway to the north face. The Ragabo pine forest at 1,400m, planted on lava from the 17th century.
The 2002 eruption took the road and the ski station with it. Both were rebuilt on the new lava, which is still black and bare.
The Mareneve road traverses the eastern flank through chestnut groves and lava fields, past the 1992 flow that stopped at the edge of town.
The south face and the Silvestri craters. Highest point reachable on two wheels, and the highest of the week.
Down through Nicolosi and back where the week started. Bike handover, or ride your own home.
“To those who have ridden through Calabria, no explanation is needed. To those who have not, no explanation is possible.”SudRiders · Parks of the South
Same road, same curves, same three national parks. Choose how you want to ride it — your bike or ours, solo or with a guide.
Fuel is the only expense during the trip. Everything else is organised.