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I think I've been confusing travelogue posts with forum posts.
Over the last week I've posted some travelogue notes on our route from north to south along the Sardinian west coast, highlighting some route problems.
The most important one concerns the impassability of the Sardinian Cycleway CS13 into Cagliari from the airport.
The next most important concerns some backroad routing problems between Porto Torres and Alghero.
(Despite these problems, we had a (mostly) great 6 days of riding and have made it safely to Sicily.)
Day 4 of our Sardinian west-coast tour from Riola Sardo to Guspini was a pleasant, flat ride along back roads with a final gentle climb into Guspini.
Day 5 from Guspini to Cagliari was another matter. Most of the route was fine (a detour 3.5 km in [via point 1] because of a closed back road, and something of a lottery as to whether a section marked as paved was actually unpaved, and vice-versa were minor suprises that added some acceptable adventure to the day).
But the final 5 km along the alleged Sardinian cycle route (marked CS13 on cycle.travel) is no longer passable, and required a major detour.
4 km after Assemeni we hit the signposted cycleway. There were no signs indicating a closure. The first partial barrier is a small, partly collapsed footbridge (via point 2). We risked wheeling our bikes across this, and it was ok. However, another few hundred metres brought us to a larger bridge across the Riu de Sestu (via point 3, see photo), which has been burnt down, and is totally impassable.
Nevertheless, we persisted and back-tracked to the start of the cycleway and crossed the railway line to follow the bike paths of Elmas across the head of the Riu de Sestu and found our way to the cycleway on other side of the burnt-out bridge. It was an adequate unpaved and paved road for 4 km past the airport until we reached Via Girolamo Emiliani (viapoint 4) where the track drops down to the railway line. And there we found that Trenitalia have closed and fenced off the trail, making it completely impassable.
With an hour and a half before we needed to board the weekly ferry from Cagliari we had no other option but to brave the insane network of autostrada that are the only other entree into Cagliari from this point. It was a heart-in-the-mouth 15-km detour through some confusing clover-leaf intersections before we found our way onto the port exit that left us with a couple of km of not-so busy roads to the port. A great relief!
cycle.travel sensibly does not permit you to plot a route along those autostrade. But we had no choice. If we had more time (and hadn't been held up by a flat tyre earlier in the day), we would have ridden back to the airport train station and caught a train into town.
With forewarning we would probably have taken the alternative route offered by cycle.travel from Guspini to Cagliari, which sensibly drops you into Cagliari from the north-east side, which is less infected by autostraditis.
Lest it seem that I only post about problems with cycle.travel*, I am happy to report that day 2 of our Sardinian tour, the coast road from Alghero to Bosa was spectacularly good: surely one of the great bike touring coast roads of the world. Great quality road almost all the way, with the few cars using it mostly driving slowly and courteously.
Day 3 (Bosa to Riola Sardo) was also great. After day 1, we headed down the back roads suggested by cycle.travel with a little trepidation, but they were all fine, even the roads represented on the map by brown dashed lines. (All the unpaved roads would be fine for road bikes, and no private property was crossed). The only navigational glitch was in Sennariolo (via points 1 and 2), where cycle.travel (and I suspect other routers) suggests heading all the way down via Regina Elena. However, the last 100 m is a steep set of steps that is easily avoided by taking a right turn a few streets earlier (at via point 1).
Mind you, it's worth a visit to the top of the stairs because you might have a delightful interaction with Luciano who lives near there, and seems to enjoy setting wayward cyclists straight.
*We are documenting our tour in more detail here.
Our first day in Sardinia, and cycle.travel threw us a few surprises on the route between Porto Torres and Algerho, with the back-road suggestions immediately being not as great as we have grown used to in Germany and France.
https://cycle.travel/map/journey/695073
The first small road between via points 1 and 2 was classed as paved: parts of it appeared to be an old Roman road with remnants of old stone paving, but it was a rough rock and gravel road for the 2km, narrowing to a walking track toward the end. It was a fun challenge on our gravel bikes, particularly after rain, forcing us to navigate some big puddles, but it would have been very difficult going on road bikes.
The section marked as unpaved at via point 3 was fine, except that the gate from the SP65 was marked private property. We risked it, and didn't meet anyone, so we cannot confirm how friendly the owners might be.
The biggest problem of the day was at via point 5, where there is an impassable locked gate (and google street view shows that this has been some sort of barrier since 2011). We needed to back-track and go around, which added a few km to our day. (The section between via points 4 and 5 are gravel, not sealed)
Otherwise, our first day's riding in Sardinia was pleasant and the other road suggestions were good!
I've been using cycle.travel a lot (a big fan) and yesterday, for the first time in many km of touring, I came across a route suggestion (from the website) that was dangerous, on the way to Martigues. (I see that brouter.de also suggests doing the same thing). I have forced the route to follow the safer way we ended up taking at viapoints 1 and 2 in this route. If you remove those two points, the suggested route takes you up a busy off-ramp from P544 the wrong way with no verge . Instead we took the on ramp on the other side of the bridge, but then had to take our chances crossing the P544 to head south. (There really doesn't seem to be a legal, bike-friendly solution to getting onto this road, and there doesn't seem to be an alternative bike-friendly way to get to Martigue from this direction.)
cycle.travel doesn't class P544 as a busy road, but it was certainly busy on a Friday afternoon in January with lots of truck traffic. P544 is essentially a 1-lane autoroute, with a generally wide verge lane that was safe enough to ride along, but we took the opportunities to take quieter detours at via points 3 and 5. (Although the map looks like you might be able to take a right turn viapoint 4, there is a concrete barrier for 500-m either side of this point preventing it.) The only stretch that cycle.travel classes as busy is a short section where the verge disappears completely for ~100 m under the bridge at viapoint 6.
After turning off P544 just after viapoint 6, the roads were good.
Made in the Cotswolds. Published by Éditions Système D Ltd.
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