Selvaggio Bike Baunei is the name we’ve given to the Iltiera charcoal burners’ muletrack, an escape route from the Selvaggio Blu trekking, a superb technical ride that we have ridden (80%) for the first time ever with our mountain bikes. It descends from Irbidossoli (tarmaced road then off-road track from Baunei) 620 m amsl 4 km to the natural mooring of Porto Cuau. Over 4 Sundays volunteers of the Comune of Baunei and Mountainbike Ogliastra cleaned the path.

We have developed with Nautica of Santa Maria Navarrese a “package” of uplift service to the start of the trail and return by boat, €33 per person min 6 persons.

Download our May 2012 Newsletter (PDF 170 kb) with The Lemon House rated “Top Choice“ and “Don’t Miss“ in the new editions of the Lonely Planet guides to Italy and Sardinia, our web site and newsletter are now in German as well as in English and Italian, kayaking videos, reviews of our mountain bike guide to Sardinia, articles about mountain biking and road cycling in Sardinia in Italian and Dutch magazines, Peter takes part in his first road cycling race of the year, choosing your crag for climbing with changeable spring weather…See you soon! Peter & Anne www.peteranne.it

A 3-week course at Rome’s Austrian Institute in January saw him studying hard, and since then he has drafted nearly all the pages of The Lemon House’s web site in German , with friends and past guests checking them. To write the pages in German, as important as the technical language issues was actually understanding

• How German-speaking tourists (after Italians who made up 57% of the person-nights in Ogliastra in 2011, visitors from Germany, Austria and Switzerland were the second-biggest group at 23%, compared to only 7% for English-speakers) perceive Sardinia, both for “general” tourism and for sports tourism. This involved lots of internet research on general and specialist websites, and reading many guidebooks to Sardinia, such as the very detailed “Sardinien” by Eberhard Fohrer, Michael Müller Verlag which mentions The Lemon House.

• What potential gaps in the sports tourism market Sardinia could fill. For instance, there is a whole group of technical mountain bikers who do “BikeBergSteigen” – see http://bikebergsteigen.org/ – and the same sort of technical limestone trails they walk/climb up mountains carrying their bikes to then ride down are also found near to The Lemon House descending to the sea. So these riders can combine this sort of mountain biking with a beach holiday.
• Where infomation sources about these sports already exist but aren’t necessarily known to German-speaking sports tourists, many of whom could get by with information in English. So as well as citing these sources on our German web site, Peter each week checks out the main German-language climbing and mountain biking sites as well as the “Aktivitäten” section of general Sardinian tourist sites such as sardinienforum.de to give detailed up-to-date information on these sports in Sardinia. Just as on UK and Italian forums, in these German forums Peter simply responds to requests for information as a walker, climber, biker and kayaker who lives in Sardinia.

This detailed information-giving approach was appreciated by one of the main German-language sites, sardinien.com,  run by MMV Reisen Italia, where Peter now writes peters-sardinien-sport-blog with a bit of help from Andrea to make his written German a bit more snappy. We have also had our first 100%-in-German bookings .

From Lonely Planet’s Italy travel guide Feb 2012, Lonely Planet’s #1 selling European country guide! Sardinia chapter: DON’T MISS “THE LEMON HOUSE
A terrific base for outdoor escapades is the Lemon House (0782 669507; www.peteranne.it; Via Dante 10, Lotzorai; per person €30-42), run by Peter and Anne. Peter has bolted some of the 800 climbing routes in the area and is a co-founder of Mountain Bike Ogliastra (www.mountainbikeogliastra.it). Their B&B is a relaxed base, with a roof terrace overlooking the mountains and sea, a bouldering wall, and homemade lemon marmalade served at breakfast. They can arrange bike hire and pick-ups, lend you a GPS and give you invaluable tips on hiking, climbing, mountain biking and kayaking.”

PETER AND ANNE, OUTDOOR EXPERTS
Owners of the Lemon House (p 213 ) in Lotzorai, Peter and Anne have been exploring Ogliastra’s wilderness since the 1990s. Peter has bolted some of the 800 climbs in the area, is the co-founder of Mountain Bike Ogliastra, and has covered 25 mountain-bike routes for the new Versante Sud guide. See www.peteranne.it for tips, route itineraries and videos.

The Lemon House B&B; Peter and Anne run this lime-hued , a terrific base for outdoor escapades, with a bouldering wall for limbering up and a relaxing roof terrace for winding down. The sports-loving duo can arrange bike hire and pick-ups, lend you a GPS and give you invaluable tips on hiking, climbing, mountain biking and kayaking. Be sure to try the homemade lemon marmalade at breakfast.

On 10th January 2012 the new Lonely Planet Guide to Sardinia should be in the shops. You can already pre-order it. We helped author Kerry Christiani and her husband Andy with the guide, suggesting walks/climbs/MTB rides and enjoying a lovely day walking down to Cala Goloritzè as the sky cleared after a spring storm. The new guide includes lots of info on outdoor activities, such as these “3 best Sardinian walks“.

Peter started to try to understand Sard (“limba sarda”) seriously when he was writing the Sardinia mountain bike guide (which includes lots of information on Sardinian culture, history and current issues, as well as the detailed descriptions of the rides), and wanted to understand what place names meant. “Su Pirastu Trottu” for example means “il Pero Selvatico Storto”, “the twisted wild pear tree” and is the pass (“genna”) that we come to at 3:00 in this video. Fortunately, at the end of 2011 a series of courses on “sa limba sarda”, were organised, with teachers from the cultural association S’Imbentu based in Ilbono, and Peter started studying in earnest. Try reading first in limba (MUCH harder than it seems…) then in easy Italian some of the “contos” (local stories) from Ilbono, Talana, Baunei, and Urzulei in the great little books “Contos de S’Ogliastra” Grafica del Parteolla written by Ivan of S’Imbentu. These stories, each with its interesting moral dimension, were told to children to entertain and educate them, but the explicit reference to sex and violence in some jumps out at you, often told with brutal and direct language…out of necessity, in the past people had to face up to life’s facts from an early age.

Mountain biking was one of the least-documented activities in Sardinia but we have (just about) fixed that! In December 2011, Versante Sud publishes (it goes to the printers on Monday Dec 5, and will be available just before Xmas) Italian and English editions of the first guide for 20 years to mountain biking in Sardinia, authored by Peter and two Sard biker friends, Amos Cardia and Davide Deidda. ISBN 978-88-96634-44-8. Peter used all our route information, and designed, explored and rode for the first time (sometimes after repeated attempts…) 15 mountain bike routes. The guide has 70 rides in the South and Centre of the island. You will be able to buy the guide in English from Cordee; we will also have it for sale at The Lemon House.