Cycling in the Delta del Po: three ways to set off from Porto Tolle

From September the Delta changes pace. The air dries out, the mosquitoes let go, and the light on the levees holds until evening without July's wall of heat. For anyone on a bike it is the best month of the year, together with May.

Here the bicycle is not an attraction: it is how you actually cross the territory. The levees stand a few metres above the fields, and from up there you see everything — the fishing lagoons, the shellfish beds in the bay, the tractors, the scattered houses. On foot it is too slow; by car you see nothing, because few levees are drivable. The bike sits in between.

Those who reach Porto Tolle in the saddle almost always come along the cycle route beside the Po, which follows the river to where the river ends. But you don't need three hundred kilometres behind you to use a bike here. There are three different ways to set off, answering three different needs.

You don't need to bring a bike

The first case is the most common: you arrive by car or train, you sleep here, and you find the bike on the spot. The City Bike Rent Point run by Marino Cacciatori is a rental point inside the catalogue of the Consorzio Veneto Delta Po (the local tourism consortium), designed exactly for this — taking a bike for half a day or a full day and moving independently.

It is the right formula for anyone who wants to decide on the morning itself, looking at the sky. In the Delta the weather counts more than the plan: with a headwind, twenty kilometres of levee become forty, and it is better to know that before leaving.

City Bike Rent Point — Marino Cacciatori

The Serenissima loop

The second case is for those who want a route already drawn, without reading the map at every junction. The Anello della Serenissima (the Serenissima loop) is a circular tour: you start and return at the same point, with no shuttles and no need to be picked up.

It is the formula for anyone with a single day who doesn't want to waste it finding the way. The name recalls the long Venetian presence on these waters: the Delta as we see it today is largely a hydraulic work, the result of centuries of digging, cuts and embankments decided in Venice to govern the river. The Taglio di Porto Viro, in the early seventeenth century, is the intervention that moved the mouth and created today's Delta.

Bike Tour — L'Anello della Serenissima

When the bike gets on the boat

The third case is the most interesting for anyone who already knows the area. The problem with the Delta by bike is that water cuts the roads: river branches hundreds of metres wide, lagoons you cannot go around without long detours. The ferry solves only part of the problem.

The bike & boat formula puts the bike on the boat. You ride a stretch of levee, go aboard, cross a branch or enter the bay, and start pedalling again on the other side. The result is a route that would not exist on pedals alone, and the chance to see the Delta from the two viewpoints that matter: from the top of the levee and from the surface of the water.

Bike & Boat in the Delta del Po

Where you come back in the evening

All three formulas start and finish a short distance from Porto Tolle. Albergo Italia regularly hosts bike travellers and cycling groups: there is somewhere to store the bikes under cover and somewhere to dry your things if the day turns bad. Those staying several nights usually use the village as a fixed base and change direction every day instead of moving luggage.

And in the evening, after seventy kilometres of levee with the wind in your face, RistòItalia is a few steps away.