Sette Fratelli | Scouting

About 30km east of Calgari’s historic center lies the Sette Fratelli Regional Park. Although the Sucis Mountains southwest of the city are closer, something told me this would be a good place to find dirt. Our three subsequent scouting rides – including one when I nearly turned the Tenere into a submarine going through a puddle of unknown depth – confirmed my hunch.

The region is quite picturesque, but best enjoyed in person. The mountains rise up to nearly 1000m with views stretching for a good 100km. The Mediterranean disappears into the horizon to the south and the Sucis range is clearly visible to the west. Hard to capture on camera without specialized equipment. Min makes it look easy on her iPhone photo above. Poetto bay in the forefront, Monti del Sucis beyond. I failed on several attempts.

Up in the hills, the roads hide many an idyllic valley. As elsewhere in Sardinia, the succulents thrive and the traffic is light to non-existent.

To get here you need to turn off the SS125 west onto an unmarked road heading towards a pile of rocks called Giant’s Grave in English, or a much more sinister sounding Sa Dom’è s’Orcu in Sardu. After much poking around and some dead ends, we eventually found just the right patch of dirt.

The trail starts as what we in the American southwest would call a forest or fire road. The surface consists mostly of packed dirt mixed with rock. Partially improved, with occasional wash outs. It begins at altitude, but runs mostly flat for the first kilometer or so. At that point, the road comes to a fork. The right side sits beyond a private gate, the left leads up into the mountains.

Continuing on the mountain fork, the trail begins to climb immediately. The grade is easy to moderate at first and ruts are few, but eventually a sharp turn reveals a whole different ball game. Rills are deep, lines of attack are few and engine guards suddenly have a purpose. Getting the bike out of a rut at grade on a solo ride could take a minute or two. On a scale from zero to ten, where zero is a flat forest road and ten the Erzerbergrodeo, I’d give what I could see up the hill a solid 4. This is where factory bash plates go to die.

I paused for a beat. Sitting atop a 100kg dirt bike is akin to riding a magic carpet as our friend Shaheen would say. A rating of 4 on the scale I just defined is not much to think about. The math is a bit different on an ADV bike weighing twice as much. Could I really pull it out of one of these ruts on my own? Won’t these rocks cut through the clutch plate like butter? On a one year journey like ours, you add a few more questions. Especially the one about eating the cake and having it, too. In other words, how much fun can I have without sabotaging the next stage.

You can find my answer to these questions in the 360 video below.

See if you can figure out where this got tricky 🙂

And for those worried about their dentures, here’s a relaxing on-road alternative as Min takes us through a very pretty valley on the lowest of revs. Also in 360.