Stage 05 of 05
Stage 5 — Otranto to Lecce
Inland from the Adriatic to the end of the route, through a handful of villages where an old form of Greek is still spoken. Flat, short, and — contrary to how a final stage is supposed to work — into the wind.
The route turns its back on the sea for the last time at Otranto and heads north-west across the peninsula to Lecce. On a map it looks like the easy finish: no climbing worth the name, a little under half the distance of the longest stage, and a city with restaurants at the end of it.
Look at the compass rather than the contours. From May to November the wind here comes from the north, and this stage runs north-west. It is the second of only two stages on the route where the prevailing wind is against you, and the one where you have four days of riding in your legs already. Nobody writes that about a final stage. It is worth keeping something in reserve for it.
Travelling north-west into a northerly. headwind, May–Nov Short, but not free. Data.
- Distance
- 44 km — road distance, not a recorded ride
- Elevation
- Effectively flat, inland through Martano. No climbing figure — the track we hold for this line was walked, not ridden, and in the opposite direction. Good for the line on the map, not good enough for a number
- Surface
- Asphalt, minor roads
- Traffic
- Light — this stage is inland, away from the coastal summer traffic
- Direction
- North-west — against the season’s prevailing wind
- Best bike
- Either drop-bar bike
- Ends at
- Lecce — free bike collection
The Grecìa Salentina
Between Otranto and Lecce sits a cluster of nine villages where a language called griko has been spoken for a very long time. It is a form of Greek, it is not a dialect of Italian, and its origin is still argued over — Byzantine settlement, or a survival from Magna Graecia, depending on who you ask. What is not argued over is that it is disappearing: the fluent speakers are mostly elderly.
Riding through the Grecìa is not a scenic experience in the postcard sense. The villages are low, sun-bleached and working; the churches have Greek inscriptions and the war memorials have surnames you will not see elsewhere in Italy. Calimera is one of them, and it is where this operation is based — which is why these roads are the ones we know best on the entire route and why the stage notes here are longer than they are for the north.
A practical consequence of local knowledge: this stretch of Salento is threaded with narrow agricultural lanes that are ideal for a bicycle and almost invisible on a road map. The GPX uses them. Riding this stage on the obvious main roads would be a completely different and much worse day.
The flat that isn’t restful
Salento is one of the least demanding places in Puglia to ride, in the sense that there is nothing to climb. Riders who come here from mountainous places sometimes find that unsettling: with no gradient, there is no rhythm imposed on you, and the temptation is to push a big gear across a flat landscape for four hours and arrive more tired than a hilly day would have made you.
Add a headwind, which in season is what this stage has, and the effect compounds. The advice from anyone who rides here regularly is the same: pick a gear you could hold all day, and hold it. The wind will not stop and there is no summit to reach.
Water and shade
This is the friendliest stage of the route for supplies. The villages are close together — a few kilometres apart rather than tens — and each has a piazza with a fountain and at least one bar. If you are riding in summer, that changes the calculation completely from stage 3: you can plan around the towns rather than carrying everything.
Shade is the opposite story. This is deep inside the area that Xylella reached first, and the olive landscape here has been transformed. Roads that had canopy fifteen years ago are open now. Between eleven and four in July you are riding in full sun with no realistic prospect of finding shade between villages.
Arriving in Lecce
Lecce is a baroque city built out of a soft golden limestone that carves like wood, and the effect of arriving in it from four days of agricultural landscape is genuinely disproportionate. Approach it in the late afternoon if you can time it: the stone does something in low light that it does not do at midday.
Practically, finishing here costs less: Lecce is one of our three free handover points, so collection costs you nothing. It is the terminus of the main railway line, with direct trains north to Brindisi and Bari, and Brindisi airport is around 35 km away with frequent trains and a shuttle bus at the far end. If you would rather ride one more day than take a train, tell us and we will collect from somewhere else instead. Logistics.
Or don’t finish here
Lecce is where this route ends because it is where the bike lives, not because the riding stops. South of here the peninsula narrows towards Leuca, with the Adriatic on one side and the Ionian on the other and a coast road that is one of the better rides in southern Italy — and which is heavily trafficked in July and August, so it is a spring and autumn proposition.
If you have days left and legs left, say so when you book and we will build the extension into your GPX and move the collection point. It costs whatever the delivery distance costs and nothing else.