Trail Ninja – Finale Ligure, Italy Mountain Biking Guide

http://www.epictv.com/

Bears, badgers and bunga bunga! In this web series, Trail Ninja Dan Milner takes a break from shooting cover shots for the world’s best mountain bike mags to give us the downlow on some of his favorite mountain biking destinations.

Stay tuned for future Trail Ninja mountain bike guides each and every month and check out more of Dan’s slightly mad/genius MTB insight at http://daily.epictv.com/blog/author/dan-milner/

It’s February 14th and I could be away in some Posh Restaurant spending a lot of money on a romantic dinner but I’m not I’m here riding my bike in Italy in Finale Lagura well I know what you’re thinking he’s down on the Mediterranean and that snow and those are be prints bare Footprints in that well you’d be wrong on two counts firstly those aren’t be prints they’re probably something like a badger cuz there’s nothing really uh down here that’s going to eat you and

Secondly that isn’t snow that’s shaving foam that’s been left over from uh last night’s bunga bunga party I’ve come up here behind s berardino to ride this stuff lots of flowy stuff lots of cross country technical Cross Country Trails lots of crazy Bedrock climbs it’s quite different riding to the stuff over by

The 24-hour Loop where we were yesterday and quite different from the interior where you do a lot of shuttle riding which is all lomy the nice thing about finale is that within these three areas quite different types of trail to ride this stuff up in San Bernardino this has

Got like a 25 km Loop C deal chappie you’re going to get a little bit of bike carrying in there to earn your earn your descent at the end um this has got all two of The Descent the make up October’s Legendary Super inero where if you want

To come and race that that’s a 50k race including five climbs five descents you can be on the start line next to Dan Aon and Fabian barell whoever they are there’s a whole network of fun to be plucked from finale’s nether Region well we’re up here on cap noly which is the Ranger Hills just east of finale town and we’re 300 m above the sea right now which means it’s 300 M coming up 300 M go back down again but in the meantime in between it all there’s a hell of a

Lot of trails up here there’s a 24-hour race track the old one which is amazing fun do a couple of loops on that and your legs are pretty spent so I don’t know how anyone complete Nutter you’d have to be to uh to Pedal that for 24

Hours a lot of good stuff up here a lot of fast flowy single track a lot of uh Enduro style riding as well and some pretty pretty fun descents Back to the Sea to finish off for a dip in fact it hit 18° today and it’s mid-February

Makes these uh Trails here right by the coast uh pretty much rideable almost all year forget summer try and ride your bike here I would say in July and August contravenes health and safety regulations so forget it it’s my 575 it’s a 150 travel bike absolutely spot on for this sort of

Terrain I’m keeping it quite light in the setup right now Eastern Haven wheels on there helping me on the climbs and there are some climbs around here these little Bey is they take good pounding as well a 150 Fork the revelations with the motion control so I can steepen up that

Front end for the steeper climbs ultimately the perfect thing the rock shock Reverb post that little puppy is going to get your ass out of trouble no end of times around here and let you have a lot more fun on the way down I’ve gone for big volume tires 2.35 2.4 size

Help an awful lot around here with the grip and the big bouncy descent down here in the Bedrock the nice thing about about uh climbing up to all these Trails getting your ride in is that you get to eat a lot more and you don’t get a big

Ass so today I’m eating one of these chimpanzee bars been recommended for me something about SP don’t know anyway one of the nicest things around at the moment chimpanzee European made little energy bar very very edible trails are pretty well marked around finale just uh look for the

Dashes of red paint on rocks on trees on passing pigs and wild boar and things like that just look out for those signs and you’ll find your way about but it can get a little bit confusing a lot of the time you are in the forest the way

The valleys run down to the Sea there’s sort of three or four valleys that run down and you can end up on Headlands which you’re not sure which one you’re on fortunately Sun bright spark has produced a quite a nice little map so I’ll grab one of them and uh hopefully

You won’t get lost if in doubt just go downhill you’re going to end up at the sea somewhere aren’t you and even if it’s not the right Town there’s always an ice Cream