Crosposted from [email protected].
When I was about to break down my tent, six white Sardinian shepherd dogs showed up. Beautiful medium sized dogs. They were barking a bit, kept a bit of distance, eventually figured I was alright, then left. Guess they had work to do.
I left camp and cycled along this dirt track, which seemed to be a real promising panoramic path to go, when I ran into the group again. The sheep were right at the track and the dogs blocked my way. I stood there for a bit, tried what happened if I pushed my bike a bit more towards them, but they did not seem to like that whatsoever. Bummer. Well at least they left me alone through the night, i heard the sheep's bells and dog's barks all around me when i got here yesterday and was a bit worried they'd bark me out of the spot in the night.
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Anyway, i did not want to test how far they would go and decided to turn around and take a different route along some asphalt road, which was also real nice, nobody around but some cows, sheep and cork trees.
Interesting, thanks! Yes, very hot already in early June, that was when I went too, but not on a bike. Almost got heatstroke when I spent a day walking in Asinara national park in the far northwest. But that's the problem with southern Europe, it's too cold till about March then you have about 6 weeks until it gets too hot!
How's the experience camping?
Camping has been good so far and I think it will continue to be like that, easy, I see no reason why not, other than shepherd dogs. It's really lonely inland, there is quite a bit of fenced off terrain, but lots of spots without fences. And the fenced off stuff has often been just some cork tree orchards where it'd be easy camping too I guess.
And Sardinian shepherds kidnapping tourists is luckily a thing of the past, haha.
Should have brought my sleeping bag liner though, bit warm in the night for the sleeping bag.
So wild camping is feasible? I believe it's mostly neglected farmland over there - no problems with farmers?
I have only wild camped here twice yet, but yeah, I don't see a problem for the coming days. There seem to also be a lot of agriturismo places in the mountains, I guess farms where you can camp and probably get some food, also not opposed to use those. But I like wild camping too.
Keep posting! Especially about any agriturismo experience, that would be really interesting to hear.
Yeah I can post something when I'm done with the trip.
Now I have looked up agriturismo on Google maps, and most of them do not mention camping but they have rooms, even a pool, I am a bit surprised to see this now because i have passed "quite some" of them, they seemed to be littered all over the no-mans-inland and they all seemed camping ready and much more simple from the outside than what I see on google, some had a camping sign on them too. They were also all not listed in osm, not as a camp site at least.
I think they would expect you to eat there if you stay there, but I don't know if that is true.
I'm sure I will end up on one or the other, but not so sure if my sample size will be a good measure by the end of the trip.
Well I for one will be interested to hear how it went. I'm planning a bike trip later this summer and accommodation is (naturally) the big question mark. I hate camping so that's out. But proper hotels are basically unaffordable in much of Europe. AirBnb (ugh) is hit and miss. Hostels tend to have great locations but they're few and far between and becoming pretty poor value too, in my experience (crummy bunk bed in dorm for 2/3 the price of a private ensuite etc). So I'm always interested to hear in whatever other options exist.
Yeah hostels ain't it no more. Saw some cheap b&b options here, the one where I stayed at was also b&b. 35 / 40 €.
Only passed one agriturismo looking place yesterday, but I was mostly completely alone on these gravel tracks would not make sense to open a business along those tracks, haha. Very lonely, nobody around, no farmers or farms either. But a lot of animals. Pigs, donkeys, cows, goats, sheep and horses. That was amazing. Never seen free roaming pigs like that, and in this landscape it was really cool to see. And all the animals had kids.
Intriguing stuff! And surprisingly affordable. I guess I should have got away from the expensive north coast (lined with billionaire villas apparently) before judging.
Post more whenever you like! I'm genuinely interested but also it might help encourage others and so (with time!) bring this community to life.
I did not stay at any agriturismo, i kept it wild (lots of great spots to be found, super easy to do) and official camping (The tip for camping Theleme in Ulassai from BP was in deed very good, very nice place and good atmosphere), took a 65€ room in Cagliari in a hotel, although there would have been cheaper b&b options but they didn't get back to me quick enough, in Olbia i paid 55 for a really nice b&b, b&b terranova (it said and still says 70€ on google maps, but it was 55). So i guess b&b is what you want to look for, they all had shared bathrooms, but only a couple rooms, so really no big deal. All had a place for the bike too.
At the highest point of the BP route
At those prices I'd be wild-camping too! It's roughly what I remember, I passed thru both Olbia and Porto Torres (in and out by ferry) and stopped in Sassari, and everywhere the value was quite poor. But Stintino was gorgeous and (almost) worth the price.
Lovely photo. No... punctures?! Trip is over now?
Cheaper only inland i guess, those were really budget options for Olbia and Cagliari. And yes, trip over, no punctures nor any other bike maintenance done. It says something like "don't go there with tubed tires" on BP, i guess there were a few thorny plants but i feel a bit like this is being a bit over dramatized (same for the altravesur route). TBF i did not ride them both completely, so i just might have luckily avoided the sections where i would have got punctures from all the thorns but i don't really believe it. My rims are not made for tubeless so even if it might be possible to make it work somehow, maybe, i don't really want to mess with it.
Stintino looks pretty great! I wanted to take a train from Cagliari to Sassari and ride around that corner of the island too, but the train is currently not going there due to construction, so i didn't. For the rock doves, haha, apparently there is a colony around here:
https://bikerouter.de/#map=13%2F40.6066%2F8.1394%2Fstandard&lonlats=8.148979%2C40.603686&profile=trekking
edit: I don't know what lemmy is doing with my link here, on preview i can still see fine what i wanted to post, but on send it fucks up the link. Anyway Capo Caccia, that's a rock dove spot apparently.
Yeah, my general experience with bikes is that the more the tyres look chunky and solid, the more likely they are to get punctures!
There seem to be so many of these apps, did not know about this one. I've got some use out of veloplanner.com and velotrain.fr but I've tended to fall back on just the basic OSM interface, which has pretty much the same functions and allows easy switching with the rail view.
Capo Caccia is not far from where I was. I'm thinking it would be so hard to look at a pigeon on a rock and see it as a completely wild animal! There must be tons of feral genes mixed in by now, too.
Is your trip over now? If not, keep posting - but do it in a new post, not here! This community is asleep, it's a great chance to wake it up! I plan to do so myself just as soon as I go away again.
I love the brouter app, have you had a look at the profiles and the configurability. I thought it used to be much better than alternatives, but they might have caught up, I just kept using this one for a long time. There is also an android plugin for osmand and some other apps, so I can use the same routing on the go, it routes much faster than osmand internal engine and I like that I have the identical routing to what I have planned.
But i guess the best routing is the one where you know how it works and know about the flaws etc.
But yeah trip is over, back at work.
Gonna check out Brouter and the Osmand plugin, thanks.
There's only one solution - a pigeon photoshoot!
If you actually try the plugin, after setting up the brouter engine profile, you most likely want to uncheck the "use fastest route" option in osmand, that always seems to be activated and i always forget to uncheck it when i set it up new.
Thx for the tip.