The bikes are ready, and so are we. We are in the saddle early in the morning to set off from Aspromonte towards Pollino and the border with Basilicata. While I was arranging the last details, my eye fell on a couple of roadside signs, side by side, indicating the same direction but with different destinations; the path of the Wolves and the path of the Fairies. I couldn't know it yet, but they weren't just geographic indications, but clues to what this journey would be like, because we encountered wild, silent, austere mountains, a nature that is still uncontaminated but for this very reason is beautiful and enchanted in the light that shines through the centuries-old beech woods, in the ferns that cover the ground, transforming it into an ever-moving green sea, in the silence of places far from the main roads, in the villages and in the hospitality of the people.
You are cycling in the highlands but the air smells of saltiness and the sea is there, just a few kilometres away as the crow flies. The Ciclovia dei Parchi reveals the interior of Calabria, the one less known to mass tourism and for this very reason still virgin, genuine, straightforward... a slow journey through the history, nature, culture, gastronomy and art of a noble and ancient region of our south.
Photos and text by Paolo Ciaberta [Photographer Paolo Ciaberta and journalist Elisa Gallo travelled along the route of the cycle route in August 2021].
