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  • Matt Padula

A Glorious Day in the Langhe


Greetings from La Morra, in the Langhe region of Italy




















Hello again faithful followers, and a belated "Happy February!" Always glad to see January in the rearview mirror. Days are finally getting a little longer and there's even a hint of spring in the air here in the Piemonte (OK, we're basically talking about highs peaking above 50 Fahrenheit, but we'll take it!). We've been solid 'yellow' for two weeks now, and rumors that they're even going to open up the ski lifts this weekend. We don't ski, but the timing's great as we have a weeklong break coming up and Barbara and I are itching to get out of town—anywhere!

The view on a bike ride last week just outside of Chieri

We'll probably head a little south towards the Langhe wine region (see this earlier post). Still can't leave the region, so we're landlocked, but the Piemonte is a lovely place to be stranded in!

BB's new ride: €100 all in!

Speaking of the Langhe, let me rewind just a few months back and tell you about an amazing day trip we took down there in October—with e-bikes! As you can imagine, it was great to get out of town to such a beautiful area again. Little did we know that we would drop back into the red/orange/yellow mess two weeks later, so this turned out to be our last real travel experience of 2020.


Why, and how, e-bikes? You may have heard that last summer, we needed to get Barbara a new bike, and were referred to a great little non-non-profit organization called muovitichieri (Move Chieri!)—they have a bunch of volunteers who staff a low-key but high-quality bike repair shop known as the Ciclofficina ('cycle office') right here in town.


It's a great model for promoting more bike use in and around the area—they take donated or discarded bikes and totally rebuild them; then they either give (to low-income people or new immigrants who can't afford a car), or sell them inexpensively to locals. You know that Barbara and I are "reduce, reuse, recycle" types, so we went to check it out and found a nice bike that they totally refurbished for us for a total of €100!

Marco and Valeria on our October trip

But the best part was meeting the people there, including Marco who runs Ciclofficina and is like "il padrino" (godfather) of Chieri biking. Marco has a high-end auto parts business he runs full-time, but on the weekends he is all about getting people out on the road. He's an amazing guy—he's super-friendly, knows everyone in Chieri, runs his shop of volunteers very efficiently...and the guy can change a tire tube in like 4 minutes easy. Marco also speaks English quite well and was thrilled to meet some Americans (us) so he could practice a little. We've really enjoyed getting to know Marco and his lovely wife Valeria, another avid biker.

How many guys in bike shorts does it take to...?

Marco also has a substantial side gig, where he installs electric motors on traditional bikes, and voilà turns them into e-bikes. He also arranges e-bike tours around our region, which attract 10-15 fellow enthusiasts on most weekends. In October, our schedules finally aligned, so Marco kindly lent us a couple of e-bikes and we joined the group for a trip to the Langhe!

Gotta go with Thule








Of course step one is getting to the Langhe (1.5 hours away by car), so we loaded up all the bikes, which was quite the operation—first we played a version of 'bike Tetris' and crammed 10 bikes inside the van, and then put 4 on the back on the quite functional Thule bike rack.

But let's get to the ride in the Langhe! We did a nice 30-mile circuit, full of glorious vistas and lots of ups and downs around the hills of the region (never would have made it without the e-bikes), with several stops all along the way. See the map on the left.


We started in the parking lot of a church perched at the top of the tiny/beautiful town of Diano d'Alba. After a lazy descent toward Grinzane Cavour, the pedaling began. It was a workout, but never too painful. The hardest-working rider was a 10-year old boy Martino who came with his parents; he had this little tricked-out electric bike and rode like a champ the whole way, never complaining (suffice to say the wheels on his bike were doing two 2-3 rotations for every one of ours!).

Hilltop church in Diano d'Alba

Clockwise from top left: On the way to Grinzane Cavour, lunch break

in Barolo, the view from Diano d'Alba, on top of La Morra


As I've often said, my pictures barely do justice to just how beautiful this area is. Check out the short video below for some "Matt-cam" action shots of our journey. Every turn had a new view of the vineyards right in their autumn harvest peak.

One of the highlights of the day was a light dinner at a cute little place called Casa Ciabotto in Verduno , about 3/4 of the way around the circuit. Besides the killer views from this lovely borgo, Verduno prides itself on growing a unique version of the Nebbiolo grape to create a very special version of the Barolo wine we all love here. Wine enthusiast says:

"According to growers and researchers, the secret behind Verduno’s trademark spiciness lies in the soil—a complex mix of calcareous clay, silt and sandstone interspersed with chalky veins...the rare native grape Pelaverga, which yields a bright, fruity red wine loaded with white pepper sensations, is grown almost exclusively in Verduno..."


These two enthusiasts thought it was quite good; we would have had more but we still had 10 kms to go!

We're already trying to figure out how to get friends and family to meet us here in Summer 2022 for a few days of biking and wine-tasting. Let us know if you're interested!

#thule @thule #regionepiemonte #verduno #casaciabotto @keepontravelin @ricksteves @muovitichieri

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