Bike tour through the Berignone and Tatti Nature Reserve

A loop-shaped trail to discover the Cecina Valley, immersed in vegetation where Mediterranean scrub alternates with holm oaks and a rare oak forest.

We leave from the medieval village of Mazzolla, whose origins date back to the 11th century, an authentic balcony over the woods and the countryside of the territory around Volterra.

The Fosci stream marks the northern boundary of the Berignone Nature Reserve, and past it we enter the forest along a dirt road: here it is possible to observe the traces of the old nineteenth-century farm system, characterized by pastures and cultivated land, now largely replaced by pine and cypress plantations, which characterize this stretch of the route.

We pass the Il Pino farm and come to the Caprareccia farm, in a panoramic position, surrounded by an olive grove of exceptional value for the stone arrangements in which the plants were grown.

We then go up wooded slopes, home to lush holm oaks, until, on the slopes of Mount Soldano, a spring invites us to enter a forest; step by step, the vegetation changes its appearance. We cross the border of the reserve and enter the Tatti woods, known throughout Europe for its rare oak population, a species of the oak family that thrives in central Europe and has found optimal conditions here.

With a path winding through the heart of Berignone we reach one of the symbolic places of the reserve, the Torraccia. Of medieval origin, better known as Castello dei Vescovi (Castle of the Bishops), it is set in a panoramic position between the valley of the Sellate stream and the Botro a Rio gorge. The trail stretch naturally is of greater technical difficulty.

The stretch on a track, from Tatti Forest almost as far as the Castle of the Bishops, requires good technical ability.

Skirting the Sellate we finally descend onto the old Maremmana road: the stretch is characterized by wetlands and open areas, very useful to ungulates such as fallow deer, wild boar and roe deer, and their great predator, the wolf. We leave the reserve by climbing up toward Mazzolla, accompanied by a rural landscape that winds through rows of cypress trees, field trees, grazing flocks, hedgerows and farms.