More tourists than inhabitants. In Italy, according to Demoskopika forecasts, 68 million visitors are expected this summer, for a total of 267 million overnight stays. It can be a fortune or a misfortune: it depends on their concentration in time and space and on our capacity to welcome. They can make some beaches and cities of art unlivable and at the same time condemn Renaissance villages and landscapes to abandonment which in other areas of the world would be formidable tourist attractors. Or they can be distributed more fluidly, fueling the recovery of internal areas, the rediscovery of routes full of charm and so far poor in marketing.
Salento has taken a step in this last direction, an area where tourism is certainly not lacking but which aims to recalibrate it by moving away from the “sun, sea, wind and pizzica” stereotype. The Salento Ionico cycle route was presented today: a 305 kilometer long route but within everyone’s reach because it can be divided into not too demanding stages. There are five rings, each of which can be covered in a day, perhaps with an e-bike for those who don’t feel very fit. And for each one an app indicates the castles, churches, museums and reserves that can be visited along the route.
The success of two-wheel tourism, which grows year after year and now ensures Italy an annual revenue of 5.5 billion euros, can be explained precisely by an expansion of the offer that allows for different approaches. The same route can be done with a competitive spirit, to break a record; or with a sporting spirit, to test your body; but also with a pleasure-loving spirit, to savor landscapes and wines on an electric bike that allows you to measure the effort, keeping it within your personal threshold of acceptability.
Interpreted in this way, the bike becomes a tool for approaching the landscape, or rather the possibility of discovering landscapes that at 80 mph with cars whizzing past you are anesthetized. At the rhythm of the pedaling the ancient volumes of farms appear which in the car are reduced to a fleeting dot; rows of negramaro whose ripening point can be hypothesized by imagining the flavors of the wine to come; small sheep tracks and, passing into the city, the enveloping forms of the Lecce baroque.
“We have created routes that are not only flexible from the point of view of physical commitment, but also from a seasonal one”, explains Sebastiano Venneri, president of Vivilitalia, the company specializing in environmental tourism that created the route thanks to the Green Community Ionico project -Adriatica (led by the municipality of Nardò) and to the PNRR funds. “We can imagine each route as a rectangle with two long sides running parallel, one on the sea, the other 6-7 kilometers inland. Outside the full bathing season, both sides can be appreciated at their best; in times of greater crowds the internal one can be used as a refuge: they are less well-known landscapes and capable of great surprises”.
“The Ionian Salento cycle route opens the doors to a new chapter of sustainable tourism for the whole of Salento, with the possibility of increasing presences in the provincial territory, especially in what are considered low season periods such as spring and autumn which for the sector, however, they are the most intense periods and when you cycle the most”, adds Stefano Minerva, president of the Province of Lecce. “The cycle path is not only useful for the 10 Municipalities that have been able to come together, but it is an infrastructure that enriches the tourist offer of the whole of Salento and Puglia”.
However, we need to know how to describe and promote the tourist offer, using the language of those who use this great cycling infrastructure. For this reason, the organizers of the route have decided that it is better to learn by doing. Tour operators, B&B owners and hotel managers were called to train by pedaling along the 305 kilometers of the route. With sweat some ideas came.
Tags: Puglia discovered cycling Salento kilometers slow tourism
