Adventure Between Sea & Mountains (Sardinia, Italy)

Six nights in a loop of Sardinia from Olbia on a Royal Enfield Himalayan, mixing rally stages, mountain national park and the coast, and it is the operator’s first Italian route.

Tempio Pausania opens it in the granite country below Monte Limbara, then the climb itself to 1,359 metres on tracks used by the World Rally Championship, which are as entertaining as that implies. The Gallura villages follow on the way to Cala Gonone, at the gateway of Gennargentu National Park and the highest ground on the island.

Nurallao comes next through the park’s cliffs and gorges below the La Marmora range, then Riola Sardo by way of the Gesturi plateau, a basalt tableland and nature reserve where semi-wild horses graze, with the Monte Arci forest beyond. The Sinis peninsula follows, where a Phoenician colony stood for centuries, and the white sand at San Giovanni.

Porto Torres is next along a sandy coastal track past the volcanic mass of Monte Ferru, with Porto Conte regional park and Neptune’s Grotto, a karst sea cave reached by boat or by a long staircase cut into the cliff. The return to Tempio Pausania runs along the northern coastline, which draws comparison with Saint-Tropez and has the prices to match, and finishes on the Limbara tracks. Bike rental is included and the price is quoted per person. Sardinia is one of the better riding islands in the Mediterranean, and the interior is nothing whatever like the coast: oak forest, limestone gorges, shepherds and villages where Sardinian is still the first language, within an hour of resorts that could be anywhere.