Throughout 2019, Ciclismo Classico will celebrate 30 years of inspired, passionate travel, offering dozens of active vacation itineraries in its core country, Italy, and elsewhere throughout Europe and around the world.
ARLINGTON, MA – This year marks a significant milestone for the first woman-owned cycle tour company in the world. In 1989, Lauren Hefferon blazed new trails and founded Ciclismo Classico, the first company to specialize in immersive small group bike tours of Italy.
Throughout 2019, Ciclismo Classico will celebrate 30 years of inspired, passionate travel, offering dozens of active vacation itineraries in its core country, Italy, and elsewhere throughout Europe and around the world.
“Pedal Your Passion” has been Ciclismo’s rallying cry for the past three decades. Today, two bicycle adventures best epitomize the company’s deep love and appreciation for all things Italian. One itinerary, Bike Across Italy, has become Ciclismo Classico’s signature tour. Another, La Bella Puglia Mini, represents the company’s quest to enhance its menu of delicious Italian stories.
In 1989, Hefferon created Bike Across Italy, a tour that still today passes through her grandmother’s hometown in the Le Marche Region of Central Italy. Designed for intermediate cyclists who can bike on average 35 miles a day, the route ventures over rolling terrain for a total of 346 miles from Pesaro on the Adriatic to Porto Ercole on the Mediterranean. Over 11 days guests cycle through four regions (Le Marche, Umbria, Lazio and Tuscany) celebrated for their rich history, distinctive local cuisines and stunning panoramas.
“This tour synthesizes legend and history by letting guests imbibe carefully curated touchstones along an east-west trajectory around and over hills and mountains. Our routes are ancient and well-worn, as is Italy herself. We let geography and populations past and present tell her story through our beloved guides,” she said.
Some of this tour’s spectacles even lie underground. These are Italy’s largest cave system and ancient Etruscan settlements under mounds of earth. Other treasures – amphitheaters, Roman gates and the Temple of Minerva – await on hill tops paved with medieval cobblestones. Guests cycle on Via Flaminia, an ancient Roman road over the Apennines, an 870-mile range of mountains that create Italy’s spine from the Ligurian Alps south through the boot. Visits to such cities as Urbino disclose echoes of ducal import contained within their walls. In Assisi St. Francis shares his wisdom before a visit to one of the best-known family wineries in Umbria. On the Tyrrhenian Sea comes a stop at Italy’s most important bird sanctuary, Tombolo di Feniglia. Among the charms that distinguish Ciclismo Classico tours are including such little-known touches as Bevagna that since medieval days has plied the craft of making fine paper or swimming in a lake created from a volcano once familiar to Etruscans.
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