Verona - Veneto overview
The northern Po Valley was long controlled by the city state of Venice and today it still lies within the Veneto region. After a
relatively short time as part of France and then Austria it is now
clearly part of Italy, though not everyone in the area would describe
themselves as Italian rather than Venetian.
Bordered by the Alps
to the north, enclosing some very pretty lakes, this area is bounded in the
south by the River Po. It is famous for its autumnal fogs and "The Little
World of Don Camillo".
As a result of many thousands of years accumulating effluvial deposts from the Alps this part of the Veneto is flat with only two interesting hilly areas in our biking route. The last 2,000 years of history have left a number of jewel-like cities across the valley, while the Verona wine production area is very large.
Our bike route is supported by a web of railway lines which provide back-up transport. The area is very bike-friendly with cycle paths, canal-side bike routes and back roads with little traffic. For a cycle route planner there are almost too many possibilities in the Verona area to chose from, but we believe we have here the route that best achieves our comfortable bike route principles. The local drivers give room for bikes to pass and other riders will wave as they go by. Bike hire is available in most of the cities and larger towns so, while we propose using Verona bike hire companies, many other places on the route can provide this service too.
 The Po and its
tributaries are followed by roads and bike paths, as are many of the canals in the valley.
The history of the area provides us with walled cities, castles,
museums, wineries and good food. Verona weather is very warm in the summer although there can be fog along the river in the early morning.
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Estimated costs
Bicycle holidays in the Verona-Veneto are not generally offered by travel agents or tour operators. But it is perfectly possible to use the web to book bike tours offered by local operators and prices can be very good due to high levels of competition.
Accommodation and other costs are average to high for Italy as over a quarter of all tourists to Italy come to this area. Our estimate of the cost of a reasonably comfortable holiday (ie staying in medium quality hotels, and eating and drinking moderately well) and assuming you rent a bike, based on riding for 7 days and two people sharing a room for 6 nights is:
| Item |
Calculation |
Cost in Euros |
| Bike hire |
€10/day per bike for 7 days |
140 |
| Hotels |
€75/night for 6 nights |
450 |
| Food and drink |
€40 per person per day, for 7 days |
560 |
| Public transport |
|
20 |
| Extras |
say €20 per person |
40 |
making €1,210 in total, or €605 per person. This would require you to travel 35 to 50km per day, depending on whether you wanted to detour to Venice or not. These distances are quite feasible as the route is level and the surfaces generally smooth. But if you want to take it a bit easier we suggest you catch a train to cut off some of the distance.
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Web translation
A lot of the smaller tourist web sites are written in Italian only. This should be no barrier to you using or them as Google offers a number of translation solutions. Our preferred option is the Google toolbar which can be downloaded, as the quality of translation is reasonable and in most cases the web page will appear in English as you read down it. This means it is always up to date and integrated with the website.
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