Cindy's Birthday Cycling Tuscany

We navigated out of town, which was also a tour of the city. It's beautiful, feels like a warm August afternoon despite being winter. I tried to get us on back roads and had luck right off the start - the classic 12 foot wide road dwindled to crushed rock. Went to Settignano first. We got climbs as steep as we could do standing in easiest gears, and beautiful forests and waterfalls. No wind, just warm sun and beautiful hillsides. Only an hour in I know this is by far the nicest cycling I've ever experienced in my life, let alone the rest of everything being so charming. I used to only want to do races; now I see the point of skipping an entry fee, putting it towards pasta and a nice hotel, and just riding random roads here.

We take back roads to Ontignano then Compiobbi, where we snap a few photos at a beautiful little waterfall and vinyard looking back where we came from. Compiobbi is a flatter road on a river, bunch of cycling teams out. I would have liked to have ridden tempo with them for a bit (esp on the flats given their waists) but I was already winning by riding with Cindy in Tuscany. We made it to Molino del Piano for a coffee stop, then up to a small castle on the way to Santa Brigida.

From there we climbed to just before Olmo, stopped for a snack and a view of the setting sun, then back to Firenze on a downhill fast enough that even the kids on motard bikes couldn't really pass until towns.

All in, only about 60k, but we spent 5h enjoying it with picture and view and coffee stops. And the plethora of steep climbing makes it hard.

With the density of little towns, rolling hills, and innumerous little roads, you could be finding new routes for years here. They're all fine to ride with smooth road tires, but a 'cross tire could make some of the downhill gravel roads a bit more fun. I'm sure there's a thousand recommended cycling routes in Tuscany, but by total fluke, this is beauty on day 1 shows that finding routes is no harder than booking a ticket to Florence and riding right out of town. Just amazing!