It’s easy to love cycling in Finale Ligure. This corner of the Italian Riviera offers great food, fun trails, and the promise of a cooling dip in the sea at the end of a day’s hard riding.

A mountain bike leaning against a rock with the sea in the background

This picture is taken from the top of the Capra Zoppa, the escarpment that closes off the bay to the west. The plateau is a network of trails that drop down by a variety of routes towards Finalborgo. The downside is that the locals don’t really believe in signposting, so despite coming here for ten years now, I still struggle to follow the same route twice.

It also doesn’t help that the local trail builders have a vicious streak to them. They are particularly enamoured of the tight switchback, right on the edge of what is possible if you are not confident of pulling off a nose-press on demand, and with high consequences for failure — as in, a tumble down a near-vertical rocky slope, anchored with trees only marginally less hard and pointy than the rocks. This year they have also added some features to a trail which is already rated S-4, with a big step-down right in the middle of one of said switchbacks. I noped out of that one, and walked my bike around until I could get back on and continue my ride.

But when you make it down, it feels pretty good, and there’s the Med, focaccia, and perhaps a cold beer, and after that you’re ready to do it all over again.

Then there are the other days…

Carrying my bike on my shoulders up a steep rocky hill

This excursion started off on the wrong foot, when my usual guide had to reschedule only a couple of days beforehand, and suggested joining another client on “a little adventure”. He assured me that the other guy’s riding level was about the same as mine, but neglected to add that the two of them were on e-bikes. I am still sticking to my unplugged bike, so with 600+m of climb just to reach the start of the portage section(!), I was at a bit of a disadvantage.1 On the other hand, I also had my gravel bike with me this year, and had been doing some training — including taking my sister out on a couple of road excursions, and pushing the big ring the whole way. When the guys in the bike shop raise an eyebrow at your route, you know you’re doing okay, so I wasn’t too worried about the climbing part of our MTB excursion.

And then the weather closed in.

Descending through a dripping wet forest

The terrain is rocky karst around here. This is not a problem when the rocks are small: gravel trails can shrug off a fair amount of water and stay rideable. The problem is the big exposed slabs of rock, because those get slippery. To make a long story short, we ended up walking our bikes downhill almost as much as we did uphill — which, with 1400m vert over the course of what was supposed to be just a half-day ride, ended up being quite something, and taking a lot longer than we had planned.

Behind another rider who is walking his bike over some slippery rocks

Honestly, it was a wonderful experience, even if it was not quite what I had planned. I did rake my forearm across a bit of rock when that turned out to be the only way to slow down in a slippery chute of rock; D3O is magic, but only on the bits it actually covers. Seriously, though, I do prefer this more adventurous style of riding to an overly-manicured bike park. The rainy weather also cut the risk of overheating and sunburn way down.

That said, I wouldn’t mind if the next time I get back to Finale, the weather could be a bit more, y’know, typically Mediterranean.

🖼️  Sunny photo by me, rainy ones by my guide Martino. Check out his school if you are in Finale, and tell him I sent you!

  1. Well, only until we had to pick our bikes up. Mine weighs maybe a third of theirs, if that, so I had my revenge there — until they could get back on the flat and enable “walk mode”. I can make a case for riding an e-bike, but that is just straight-up cheating. Not that it helped them much: the unladen rear wheels seemed to skid around on the wet rock way more than they provided any assistance. ↩