Cycling in Varese, Lombardy
Last stop on the Italy trip! Like Bergamo, I picked it mainly for affordability and for direct access to the Milan airport. It is KIND of near Lake Como, which is on many people’s bucket list bike rides and near many other large Lombary lakes with some hills sprinkled to the north. However you are truly not in the Alps anymore here making the best bike rides mostly lake rides.
Campo Di Fiori
Did this ride after arriving. It took 5 hours to get from Bergamo to Varese…
Normally you can bike to the observatory on top but the road was closed due to construction ( it needed it… ).
Passed by Sacro Monte as well but you can mainly only visit that area on foot.
Lake Como + Bike Museum
The train to Como from Varese is about 1.5-2 hours and it saves you about 25-30km each way…. Biking would be 2 hours faster if you feel like doing a 240km ride…
The bus is just 1 hour but I have no idea if they let you bring bikes on it.
I did the climb to the cycling church/museum as well which is well worth it in my opinion if you have the legs. Otherwise the lake loop itself is about 140-150km already which is at the limit for many cyclists.
There’s an extensive ferry network that you can take to shorten your ride however. Lake rides are great because the weather is much cooler so great to do if you came here during the peak summer heat. The one drawback of this ride is the traffic and tunnels. Tunnels you can just bring a light and be fine. But the traffic is very annoying. The roads are narrow and lots of people wait in line all the way to the right, blocking cyclists. You will also do a lot of little climbs and then have to slam the brakes as you descend back into the next town because of the cars jammed like sardines trying to get through an over-crowded tourist mess. The towns without tourists all tend to have a narrow central road that only lets one direction of traffic go through at a time.
Basically don’t expect to be going that fast most of the day, just enjoy the scenery and watch out for annoyed sketchy drivers… To be fair there are a lot of extremely slow cyclists making this all worse by slowing traffic to a crawl in random spots.
Lago di Lugano
A great lake ride that takes you over the swiss border. You don’t need a passport? I think? Nobody stopped me or seemed to care.
The lake looks the same as the others, just a bit smaller and a bit less scenic. The road doesn’t quite go all around either as you have to climb 600m to San Fedele then back down.
As a bike ride it’s better than Como since it has less traffic and less busted roads.
Lago Maggiore
The biggest Lombardy lake, part in Switzerland. Probably the best one in terms of having an enjoyable bike ride because the road is nicer, wider and has much less traffic because nobody cares about this lake for some reason. There’s a few very touristy towns on the west short with tons to see and do though. This lake has a bunch of small islands with interesting constructions on it as well. The area feels a lot richer than the rest of Italy too, with lavish new(ish) hotels, casinos and modern housing. I blame the Swiss.
Little Lakes Recovery
Chill ride today, was hoping for good views of the lakes and the wildlife refuge but most of this route is residential/industrial/agricultural or in the woods, confirming the rule that you shouldn’t ride where it’s flat in Italy.
Fatigue ( mental and physical ) just really heavy by this point. I did not want to do that ride.
Alpe de Neggia + Passo Cuvignone
Very last ride. Felt strong enough to do this solid ride all the way up north to the 20th hardest climb in Switzerland. It starts right on the edge of Lake Maggiore and climbs up about 1100m to a little Refugio and a mountain pass back down to the lake. The views as you climb up are amazing with lake views almost all the way to the top.
Added a second climb going back to Varese. That pass is compete crap. No views, super narrow busted roads and very steep descent both ways with way too many tight blind switchbacks. Really one of those “why did you even build this?” roads.
Italy seems to suffer from an over-abundance of tarmac.
Next and final part with be the tourism, including the bike museum on Lake Como!