Delivery, collection and luggage between stages
A route that goes from one place to a different place has a problem a loop doesn’t: the bike has to get back. This page is how that is handled and what it costs.
The three free points
Collection and return are free at any of these three. All three are in Salento, at the southern end of the route — which is where the operation actually lives.
| Point | Address | Useful if |
|---|---|---|
| Lecce | Pop Cafè, Via Guglielmo Paladini 42 — between the station and the old town | You’re arriving or leaving by train. Lecce is the end of the main line, and the handover is a few minutes’ walk from the platforms |
| San Foca | Via D’Annunzio 13 | You’re staying on the Adriatic coast south of Otranto |
| Calimera | Via Roma 163 | You’re inland in the Grecìa Salentina |
Everywhere else
If you’re starting in Alberobello, Ostuni, Monopoli or Brindisi — which most people riding this route north to south will be — you are outside the free points, and delivery is charged.
We deliver anywhere in Puglia — not to a shortlist of towns. The price depends on three things: distance, how many bikes, and how many days you are hiring. As a range, €20 to €250 each way covers the whole region, both ends included — €250 is the Gargano, the far north.
Read that as it is written: the figure is per leg. Bringing the bikes to you is one leg and collecting them is another, so a hire that starts and ends away from our three free points is charged twice. We would rather you knew that from this page than from an invoice. We work out your two figures once we have the exact address, and you have both before you commit to anything.
Those three variables matter in your favour more often than not. A long hire spreads the same journey across more days. A group of four spreads it across four people. The delivery that looks expensive against a two-day solo hire looks like nothing against a week for three.
Arriving by train? We can leave the bikes near the station. At either end — for the handover, the collection, or both. Bicycles travel free on Puglian regional trains, so for anyone coming without a car this is usually the simplest and cheapest way to start: get yourself to the town, pick the bikes up by the station, ride out from there.
What moves the number, in order: how far the address is, how many bikes are going there, and how many days you are hiring for. What we can’t do is quote it from a town name — two bikes to a masseria outside Ostuni for a week and six to a hotel in Bari for two days are different jobs, and a flat rate would mean one of you paying for the other.
When we’ll tell you not to bother
On a one-day hire, delivery to the far end of the region costs more than the bikes do. We will say so, and point you at a train to Lecce, San Foca or Calimera and a free handover, rather than take a booking where most of what you pay is our diesel.
At two or three days it depends on where you are and how many of you there are; we give you the number and our honest read on it. From four or five days upward the delivery is a small fraction of the hire and it generally makes sense.
One-way hire, which is the normal case here
Almost everyone riding this route starts in one town and finishes in another. That’s the default assumption on this site, not a special request — the route is linear, roughly north to south, from the Valle d’Itria down into Salento.
Mechanically it is simple: we bring the bike to where you start, and we collect it from where you finish. What you should think about is the two ends of your own journey rather than the bike’s. The route finishes near Lecce, which has direct trains to Bari and Brindisi and is well connected to both airports; it starts inland in the trulli country, which is not. Getting yourself to the start is usually the harder half, and it is worth solving before you book flights out of the wrong airport.
Riding it the other way
South to north works too, and has one real advantage: your delivery point is then Lecce, San Foca or Calimera, which are free, and only the collection is chargeable. It also usually means finishing at Bari or Brindisi airport rather than starting there.
The argument against is the wind, and it is not a small argument on a flat, exposed route. Whether you spend five days being pushed or five days being resisted depends on the prevailing direction in the month you ride. The wind page is where that decision belongs, and it is the single most useful thing on this site for planning direction of travel.
If you skip a stage or change the plan
Skipping a stage is fine and doesn’t change anything about the bike: you still have it for the days you booked, and you can spend one of them on a beach or on a train. Call us if it changes where you want the bike collected. If the new collection point is meaningfully further away, the fee changes, and we tell you the new number before we move anything.
Putting the bike on a train for a section is allowed and sometimes sensible. Regional trains in Puglia take bicycles free of charge — you ask the conductor before boarding and get a zero-cost supplement, and the rules and prices are the operator’s rather than ours — check before the platform, not on it.
Luggage
We move bikes, not bags. There are three ways this normally gets solved and all of them work on this route.
Carry it
- Rear panniers, €2 per day
- Fits the Checkpoint and both electrics
- Not possible on the Domane — no rack mounts
- Best for anyone travelling with one bag
Leave it, or send it
- Leave the bulk in one hotel if your route returns there
- Or use a local taxi or transfer firm to move a bag between hotels
- We’ll tell you who operates in a stretch if you ask
- We don’t book it and don’t take a commission
Handover, both ends
Delivery takes about twenty minutes. We check the fit with you on the bike rather than beside it, set the saddle properly, run through what’s in the kit and where the tools are, and make sure you can find the GPX on your own phone before we leave. If anything about the bike isn’t right, this is the moment it costs nothing to fix.
Collection is faster. We look the bike over with you there, which protects both of us — you know what has been noted, and nothing gets raised afterwards that you weren’t shown. Normal wear from a week of riding is expected and not chargeable; the rental terms say what is.