Join us for a week in Italy at the Belvedere Bike Hotel

Fancy joining us for an end of season break, on a bike somewhere nice? We’re off to the Belvedere Bike Hotel in Italy at the start of October for what we’re calling The road.cc Italian Week - and if you'd like to come along - you can. We're going from Saturday 4 October to Saturday 11 October.

There’ll be guided rides through the hills of the Emilia Romgana, coffee, great food, more rides, coffee, and great food plus you get to watch a fair chunk of the road.cc team trying to put the website together between rides while drinking coffee. We’ll be bringing some bikes with us to test, so you’ll see how we do it which mainly involves riding them. In fact almost exclusively. Even so…

Why the Belvedere? Well it’s an old favourite of ours - we’ve been visiting it for years - since before road.cc existed. The riding in the hills of the Emilia Romgana and in to Tuscanny is fantastic - and so is the food - and the free bike kit laundry service is a really nice touch too. There’s also a fantastic Wellness Centre in the basement with sauna, Ice room and all sorts of other healthy non-strenuous post ride things to do. For the same reason It’s also a great place to bring a non-cycling friend.

To give you a flavour of what it’s like here’s a link to Vecchiojo's accounts of previous visits. He was also out there earlier this year to ride the Pantanisima.

Stuff we’ll definitely be doing includes riding up to Urbino for coffee and cakes and putting in a visit to San Marino.

Prices are based on the Belvedere’s Super Half Board package and start at €114 per person per night based on two people sharing a room and includes:

• Rich and energizing breakfast buffet
• Afternoon lunch buffet on your return from the ride
• Dinner buffet including free mineral water, iced tea and local house wine.
• Up to 5 daily guided bike rides corresponding to different levels
• Packed lunch for the ride with sandwich, fruit and an energy drink
• Bike wash area with bike cleaning equipment
•12-hour laundry service for bike clothes
• Secure bike storage room with CCTV
• Free WIFI access 
• Free entrance and use of our 450m Spa & Wellness Centre including Spa courtesy set (bathrobe and sauna towel           on free loan and a pair of free spa slippers)
• A Belvedere wash bag with a selection of bathroom amenities
• An informational welcome pack together with a belvedere Bike T-Shirt
• Everyone booking through road.cc will also get a free Belvedere cycling jersey with €50 - just put road.cc in the address line of your email when you contact them.

The easiest way to get to the Belvedere is to fly to either Ancona or Bologna - there are flights from various UK airports. The Belvedere organise transfers from Ancona and Bologna, and if you’re bringing your bike they can cope with that too - just let them know what your plans are in advance and they’ll organise evethting and give you a price. Don’t want to bring your own bike? The Belvedere has a hire fleet of rather nice De Rosa’s.

If this sounds like the sort of way you’d like to spend the first week of October then email bike [at] belvederericcione.com (bike [at] belvederericcione.com) and stick road.cc in the subject line, they'll contact you, and we’ll see you there.