The Eroica classic race — contested since 1997 on gravel roads through the Chianti hills — is responsible for an entire sub-culture of vintage cycling that has nothing to do with performance and everything to do with pleasure. You can spot Eroica participants in their woollen jerseys and on their steel-framed bikes in Gaiole in Chianti throughout the summer. They ride roads that the modern sport largely abandoned, and the roads reward them with something that smooth tarmac cannot: texture, noise, the feeling that you are genuinely connected to the terrain beneath your wheels.
The Strade Bianche Experience
The white roads of Tuscany — strade bianche — are compacted limestone gravel: fine enough that a road bike with 28mm tyres handles them confidently, rough enough that your hands know they are there. The most famous section, used in the professional Strade Bianche race in March, runs through vineyards outside Siena in a cloud of white dust that turns pink in the late afternoon light. I rode it on a Tuesday in April with no other cyclists in sight and felt briefly, purely, like the luckiest person in the world.
"Tuscany resets your relationship with cycling. You stop thinking about power numbers and average speeds. You start thinking about the view, the wine waiting at the bottom of the descent, and how many more kilometres you can reasonably justify before dinner."
The climbs here are not Alpine in scale but they are relentless in accumulation. The hills between Siena, Montalcino, and Montepulciano — wine country, all of it — involve constant short, steep pitches that punish a heavy gear and reward a light one. By day three I had abandoned any attempt at a fast average speed and simply let the terrain dictate the rhythm. It was the correct decision.
The Table as Part of the Journey
In Tuscany, what you eat is inseparable from where you have ridden. A bowl of ribollita after four hours in the hills is not just lunch — it is a narrative. The bistecca alla Fiorentina in a farmhouse restaurant outside Pienza, paired with a local Rosso di Montalcino, was one of the finest meals of my life. The cycling earned it. Or perhaps the cycling was the excuse for it. Either way, the combination is not accidental.
If you want cycling that feeds every sense — not just the legs and the lungs but the eyes, the palate, the spirit — Tuscany is your answer. Come in spring. Come with empty panniers for the olive oil you will inevitably bring home. Come ready to fall in love with a region that has been doing this for 3,000 years and shows no signs of stopping.