Tour Plan

Day 1 (28/4)
‘The Prologue’

First night in Rome — dinner, motorcycles collected, Sicily still a night ahead

Airport pickup – hotel check-in – motorcycle handover – aperitivo and dinner in central Rome. No riding — just a first evening together before the road begins.

Day 2 (29/04)
‘Mountains and Sea’

South through the volcanic hills, along the Tyrrhenian cliffs, and out to sea from Naples

We leave Rome the good way, climbing into the old volcanic hills south of the city before the land tips down to the sea. The afternoon belongs to the coast — a cliff road that runs headland to headland above the water, past Gaeta and its castle — until we reach the bay of Naples, ride the bikes onto the ship, and sail out past the city lights as dinner is served on board. We sleep at sea and wake off the coast of Sicily.

Day 3 (30/04)
‘To The Land of Fire’

From Palermo to the finest beach on the island, and high up to Erice

We dock at first light and ride into Palermo for a proper breakfast before the streets fill. The morning climbs to a great cathedral above the plain, then turns inland through Piana degli Albanesi — a town that has kept its Albanian language and its Orthodox rite alive for five centuries — on quiet, looping roads with the wrists loosening nicely. We come down to a coast of cliffs and coves and reach San Vito Lo Capo, the finest beach on the island, where the cape runs out into clear turquoise water. The day finishes with its best riding: a long, beautifully surfaced climb of switchbacks to Erice, a medieval town that sits up in the cloud above the sea. We sleep below it.

Day 4 (01/05)
‘Into the Valley of The Temples’

Segesta, a ghost town, a harbour lunch in Sciacca, and the temples of Agrigento in late light

We ride east to a single Greek temple standing alone on a hillside with nothing around it but the wind, then through the broken streets of a town an earthquake emptied and time left exactly as it fell. We come down to the sea at Sciacca for a long fish lunch at the working harbour, then west past white sea cliffs to Agrigento, where the Valley of the Temples waits in the late light, better preserved than most of what still stands in Greece. Dinner and the night nearby.

Day 5 (02/05)
‘Through The Earthland’

A castle on a rock, the ceramics town of Caltagirone, and down into Ragusa as the light goes

The day we cut straight through the middle of the island, up out of the temple country into the clay highlands — bare, rolling, almost empty of traffic. A castle stands on a rock above one of the towns and looks invented until you are underneath it; coffee there, then long inland roads to Caltagirone, the ceramics town whose great staircase climbs the hill in hand-painted majolica, a different pattern on every step. We cross a ridge with the whole south of the island laid out below and drop into Ragusa as the light goes. The town keeps us two nights, which it earns on its own.

Day 6 (03/05)
‘Down to Italy’s Last Point’

The southern coast, the best seafood in Europe, and Italy's southernmost tip.

A loop day with the luggage left behind. We ride the great descent into a town split across a gorge, take coffee in another built of honey-coloured stone, and follow the coast east to Marzamemi — an old tuna village of one cobbled square, where lunch is whatever the boats brought in that morning and quite possibly the best seafood of its kind in Europe. From there we run down to the very tip of the island, the southernmost point of all Italy, before turning back to Noto for an ice cream on the cathedral steps, in the most theatrical baroque town on the island. Back to Ragusa as the afternoon takes us.

Day 7 (04/05)
‘The Volcano Route’

Coffee in the Hyblaean hills, lunch on the island of Ortigia, and Etna on the horizon all afternoon

North through the Hyblaean mountains, a coffee in a baroque hill town with a Greek theatre cut into the slope, then down to Siracusa for a long lunch and a walk on the island of Ortigia, where the cathedral was built straight inside a Greek temple and the old columns still stand in its walls. After that the bikes point at Etna and we watch it fill the windscreen all afternoon, climbing to a wine estate on its eastern flank that will be home for two nights.

Day 8 (05/05)
‘Riding Etna’

A full circuit of Etna on perfect tarmac, ending with a wine tasting on the volcanic slopes

A full day given to the volcano, and the best riding of the whole tour. We ring Etna by its high roads — south across old lava fields, west to Bronte and its green pistachio country for lunch, north under the summit, and back along a stretch of flawless tarmac and unbroken corners through forest and old flows. There is nothing to do today but ride it. We return to the estate in the evening for a tasting of the wine grown in the black soil beneath the vines.

Day 9 (06/05)
‘The Great Mountain Route’

The road west, fast and empty, Sperlinga's rock-carved homes, and Gangi on the ridge

A little more Etna to start, on roads we saved from the day before, and then onto one of the great rides of Sicily — the SS120, running west along the foot of the mountains in long, fast, open curves with almost no one else on it. We break for coffee, and for lunch in one of the old towns along the route, and stop at Sperlinga, where people have lived in homes cut into the rock face for four thousand years. A last coffee in Gangi, a contender for the most beautiful village in Italy and one that holds up to the claim, then down through the forest to the night's stop.

Day 10 (07/05)
‘From Madonie to The Sea’

The island's finest mountain range, a farewell lunch in Cefalù, and the coast road back to the ship

The last day in Sicily goes up into the Madonie, the island's finest range — high beech woods, the highest villages on the island, a plateau loud with wildflowers in May, and roads you ride slowly only because the views insist on it. We come down to Cefalù for a long farewell lunch in the shadow of its Norman cathedral, under the great rock that stands over the town, then take the coast road back to the port. Sicily goes dark behind the ship.

Day 11 (08/05)
‘The Last Run’

Dawn through a sleeping Naples, coffee at the old port of Pozzuoli, lunch on the beach at Formia, and Rome

We dock at dawn and ride out through a Naples still asleep on a Saturday morning, the city ours before it wakes. Coffee and a pastry at the old port of Pozzuoli, on Roman ground at the edge of the bay, then up the coast to Formia for lunch on the beach. One last proper ride over the Aurunci mountains, the motorway for the final stretch, and into Rome. The bikes go back, we check into the hotel, and the tour closes the way it should — a celebratory dinner together in the centre of Rome, a great deal of island behind us.

Day 12 (09/05)
‘Returning Home’

Breakfast and onwards — or a few more days in Rome