The beaches on the southern coast of Sardinia are hard to beat. With their turquoise waters and white sands they could be as well located somewhere in the Caribbean. And the beaches of Chia are even known as the best Mediterranean surfing spots. But what about mountain biking? Is it worth to bring your bike there?
We took the ferry from Genova, which gave us the opportunity to make a stop-over in Finale Ligure, so we had anyway good reason to have the bikes with us. And even more so in Sardinia. Luckily, I got connected to the local MTB-community through my tour guide from Finale. Otherwise we probably wouldn’t have discovered those sweet MTB-trails in the Pantaleo Forrest near Santadi.
All Bikes Santadi (https://www.facebook.com/ALLBIKESSANTADI/ ) offers a monthly shuttle day and builds and maintains the trails in the pristine Pantaleo Forest. Battista and Loris took us uphill with their shuttle-truck on a steep and rugged forest road so we could zip down down the two lines Ritmo Sbilenco and Le Egue several times. The Ritmo Sbilenco is an about 2 km long line with tight turns on loose dirt under shady trees while Le Egue is mostly on rocky surface with some berms and jumps. Another trail, the S8, runs across a mountain ridge and was initially built for charcoal production. Nowadays, it is churned up by wild boar and flattened by fat MTB-tires. After all we had a magnificent day of enduro riding with the local MTB-community including a delicious picnic lunch in the forest followed by a refreshing bath in a river. To hook up with local riders contact “ALLBIKESSANTADI” on Facebook or “Denis_Mirror” on Instagram.
However, there are as well lots of nice trails on the coastline. Particularly around the Capo Spartivento there are lots of trails to be explored. Another scenic trail above the coastline runs from the Torre Chia to Pinus Village.
allmountaindinger's mountain bike meccas 