Valencia is, due to its size, orography and climate, an ideal city to explore by bicycle, but for Pier Paolo Leonardi, there is one of the cycling routes around Valencia essential: pedaling along the beach.
Based in Valencia for 18 years, Pier decided one day to leave his job in the field of logistics to dedicate himself to his passion: the bicycle, with which he has traveled half the world. This is how ‘Passion Bike’ was born, a bicycle rental business and bike tours around the city of Valencia.
Last Wednesday, June 3, World Bicycle Day was commemorated, an excellent excuse like any other to take a bike tour of Valencia, in which the beach and the old town are a must.
As a good connoisseur of Valencia and its streets, Pier organizes tours for tourists who, increasingly, decide to visit the city by bike. “The Day Tour allows you to see the highlights of the city and the Night Tour to enjoy the sunset.” It also has a five-day “hardcore” proposal. The route through the Albufera, with the rice paddies, the salt water lake and the sea “is also very representative of Valencia”.
More than 300 ciclyes
However, the passion of this germiniani is the sea. Beyond monuments or places. “The old town has a lot of charm, also the Mercado de Colón or the Mercado Central, but for me it is essential to pedal near the beach.”
More than 300 bicycles spread over three stores, agreements with seven hotels and concerted groups of Italian travellers. From his headquarters next to the Torres de Serranos, one of the unavoidable appointments of his tours, he has managed more than 20,000 routes, organized or free, per year. And that, as he admits, “many of the cyclists do not even know how to ride a bike.”
That is one of the reasons why he rules out organizing routes to the mountain. “Also because you need other types of bikes to hit the road.” Of course, he recognizes that it would be “easy for tourists to adapt to the tradition of taking a bike route and stopping for lunch. I remember the first time I went out in a group, me with an energy bar and suddenly we stopped for lunch. I got used to it, ” he smiles.
The effects of the coronavirus have been noticed in a business aimed at tourism. “These are decisions that do not depend on you, on how well or how badly you did it.” Still, he is optimistic: “from June to August we will recover.”
His passion for cycling has allowed him to explore new adventures, such as a headquarters in Malaga or planning routes to Alicante, with stops in Dénia or Jávea … because pedaling along the beach is essential.
