Sports and Nature

The green hills of Casentino Valley have plenty of routes and itineraries. It is easy to choise between asphalted roads or not asphalted ones to travel from a village or an halmlet to the other with very few or completely without traffic, noise or pollution. Al the bottom of the valley forests alternate with vineyard, olive and sunflowers plantations, Middle Ages hamlets or splendid isolated stone villas. Ascending the hills and mountains you'll find more forests of beehs and firs or pasture, that you can cross using the paths keeped and equipped with signposts by the Forest-Corps of Casentino's forest Park. Beside the beauty of landscapes, other plus concur to make happy walkers and cyclists, like dry climate and limpid sky, frequent water springs and fountains and places of history/artistic interest merged with the ones of naturalistic interest. You can choise to simply enjoy panoramic excursions by foot in the surroundings of Villas Cincinelli or to use its favorable position to easily reach these naturalistic resources in the valley moving few kilometers by car, bus or bicycle. Walker and off-road ciclysts will appreciate for example the section of the G.E.A (Grande Escursione Appenninica, i.e. Big Excursion in Appennino mountains) that cross the Casentino forest Park. This itinerary permit to reach mystic places like the Franciscan monastery of La Verna (near the village of Chiusi della Verna) and the Camaldoli's Hermitage of Dominican friars by a path dipped in wonderful forests. Instead road cyclists will enjoy for example the panoramic "seven bridge" tour, between the villages in the surroundings of Arezzo, that have this name because cross the river Arno seven times, or the hard climb to the Crocina mountain summit. In general they will appreciate the abundance of roads with few car traffic where is easy encounter other cyclists, with possibility to cover plain sections in the bottom of the valley and extended climb/slope sections on the sides of the valley. We suggest to try also the asphalted road that from Camaldoli's forests go down for 18 km to the valley where appears the Poppi's Castle.