The Italian Job Self-Guided Tour

The whole length of Italy on a motorcycle, self-guided. Fifteen days from Treviglio near Bergamo, fourteen nights and around 2,100 miles, running down through Tuscany and the Amalfi Coast to Puglia and back up through Umbria to Florence.

The opening days are the famous ones. Pisa and its leaning tower, then the walled hill town of Volterra and the Chianti hills on the way to Siena. Montalcino and Lake Bolsena follow towards Rome, then the Amalfi Coast, where the road is cut into the cliff above the sea and two nights at the Sorrento Peninsula leave a free day for Capri or Pompeii.

The south is where it gets less predictable. Maratea and the Cilento coast lead into Basilicata and Alberobello, a town of conical dry-stone trulli that look invented, then Matera, where people lived in cave dwellings carved into the ravine until the 1950s and now stay in them as hotels. Vieste on the Gargano promontory follows, then the Adriatic coast, the Sibillini mountains and Assisi, before two nights in Florence.

EAGLERIDER supplies the motorcycle and books all fourteen nights, with route notes for each day. Fuel, meals and insurance are arranged separately, and prices are quoted in US dollars. Riding days run from 80 to 250 miles, with two free days built in. For riders who want Italy properly rather than a long weekend near one of the lakes, this is the complete version of it, and it reaches a good many parts that most visitors never see.