Stage 04 of 05
Stage 4 — Brindisi to Otranto
The stage where Puglia stops being one place and becomes another. It also starts with the least attractive ten kilometres of the whole route, and we would rather tell you that now.
South of Brindisi the coast is industrial. Energy and petrochemical installations sit between the road and the sea, and the regional cycling route’s own description is blunt about it: the plants push you away from the coast, and you reach Lecce’s hinterland on minor roads through the olive groves instead.
That is exactly what this stage does. It leaves the port, turns inland to get around the industrial belt, crosses the neck of the peninsula through olive country, and comes back to the Adriatic further south where the coast is worth being on again. The compensation is that you arrive in Salento by the back door, through the working landscape rather than the seafront one.
Travelling south-south-east with a northerly behind. tailwind, May–Nov Data.
- Distance
- 97 km following the coast — road distance, not a recorded ride. By far the longest of the five, more than double the two short stages. Most people should split it at San Foca
- Elevation
- Flat inland, low undulation approaching the coast. No climbing figure — on ground this flat, GPS height error is larger than the hills
- Surface
- Asphalt for almost all of it, on minor roads
- Traffic
- Normal outside the summer. Heavier in July and August, when the coast road fills up — see below for what we do about that
- Direction
- South-south-east — with the season’s prevailing wind
- Best bike
- Either drop-bar bike; no surface argument either way
- Ends at
- Otranto — the easternmost town in Italy
Getting out of Brindisi
Leaving any port city by bicycle is a job rather than a pleasure, and Brindisi is no exception. Give yourself the first half-hour as an administrative task: follow the track, don’t improvise, and don’t be tempted by the coast road, which leads into the industrial zone rather than around it.
Once past it the change is quick. Within a few kilometres you are on the kind of road that makes this region worth riding: two lanes, low walls, groves on both sides, nothing coming the other way.
The olive country, and what it looks like now
This stage crosses the middle of the Xylella zone, and it is where the change in the landscape becomes impossible to ignore rather than something you notice occasionally. The bacterium arrived near Gallipoli in 2013 and has worked northwards; between Brindisi and Otranto you ride through the part that has been affected longest.
What that means practically: long stretches where the trees beside the road are standing dead wood, stretches that have been cleared and replanted with young resistant varieties in straight rows, and occasional pockets of intact ancient grove that look like the photographs. It is a landscape in the middle of being remade, and riding through it slowly is a very different experience from driving through it.
It also means shade is scarce. Every guide to cycling here still contains a sentence about lanes canopied by centuries-old olives. On this stage, that sentence is largely out of date. Plan water and timing as though you are riding in the open, because you are.
One thing worth saying plainly, because almost nobody does. The Adriatic coast is ridable by bike without interruption from Manfredonia, up on the Gargano, all the way down to Santa Maria di Leuca at the tip — a little over 400 km. Not in the sense that a route planner will draw you a line, but in the sense that it is continuously ridable — we know the Salento half far better than the northern one, and we will say which is which. Where this stage turns inland it is to get round the industrial belt south of Brindisi, not because the coast runs out.
Ninety-seven kilometres is a long day, and we would rather say so than let you find out. If you are riding this at touring pace, with luggage and a headwind possible, split it: San Foca is two thirds of the way down and it is one of the three places we hand bikes over for free, so it is an easy place to stop or to start again. Riding it in one go is entirely possible — it is flat — but it is the one day on this route that deserves a decision rather than an assumption.
August, and the one kilometre that fixes it
The coast road is asphalt almost the whole way and carries normal traffic for ten months of the year. In July and August it fills up, because everybody who is staying on this coast drives along it, and there is no point pretending otherwise: a summer afternoon on the litoranea is not the ride you came for.
The fix is a kilometre inland. Running parallel to the coast road, a little further in, is a network of country lanes and provincial roads that go the same way and carry almost nothing. You give up the sea view for stretches at a time and you get back an empty road. Ask us when you book and we will tell you where they are, so you can drop inland where it is worth it and come back out where it isn’t.
This is the sort of thing that does not come out of a route planner, and it is the reason to ask somebody who lives here rather than downloading a GPX from a forum. Nobody plans a summer ride along this coast twice without learning it.
The other thing about the heat is that the answer to it is fifty metres away. This stage runs along the sea for most of its length, and there is no rule saying you have to finish it before you stop. Ride the first stretch early, swim, eat something, ride the rest when the sun is off the top of the sky. Bring something to swim in and leave it somewhere you can reach without unpacking — on a coastal route in August that is not an extra, it is part of the plan. Ninety-seven kilometres in that heat are felt; a swim pays them back.
And the small places along this coast grill fish properly — not the seafront ones with photographs of the dishes outside, the ones a street back with four tables and whatever came in that morning. You will ride past a dozen of them. Stopping at one in the middle of the day is a better use of the hottest three hours than pedalling through them, and it is the reason a long stage here is not the same thing as a long stage somewhere else.
The coast, when you reach it
The route returns to the Adriatic on the stretch of coast north of Otranto, where the shoreline is low, rocky and punctuated by small resort villages. San Foca is one of them, and it is one of our three free pickup and drop-off points — which means if you want to end the route here, or start it here riding north, delivery costs you nothing. How that works.
In July and August this coastal strip is busy in a specifically Italian way: not tourist-coach busy, but full of people from Lecce and the inland towns who come to the sea for the day. That is pleasant in the evening and adds traffic in the middle of the day.
Otranto
The easternmost town in Italy, with a walled centre above a small harbour and a cathedral floor covered in a twelfth-century mosaic that is worth going inside for even if you have run out of enthusiasm for churches. On a clear morning you can see the mountains of Albania across the strait, which is a useful corrective to the idea that you have ridden to the end of anything.
It is a good place to spend a rest day and a slightly awkward place to be in high summer, when the centre is crowded. If your dates are in August, consider sleeping just outside and riding in.
How to ride it
Southbound in season the wind is behind you, so this is a stage that rewards an early start and a long lunch rather than an early start and a race. Get the industrial section done before the traffic builds, then take the middle of the day off in one of the inland towns and finish in the late afternoon along the coast, which is when that stretch is at its best.
The one thing worth watching is water: the inland crossing has fewer places to stop than the coastal sections either side of it. Fill both bottles before you leave Brindisi.