Handbike riding in the Pinerolo area to map summer itineraries suitable for everyone. With Luca Paiardi and Danilo Ragona, discovering inclusive cycle tourism.
You write disability but you read opportunity. This is what those people teach us who, with courage and intelligence, have chosen to set aside the anger tied to a difficult fate — one that bends and breaks — to push forward and build paths of inclusivity. This is the case with the project signed by Viaggio Italia that goes by the name Pinerolo Handbike tour.
We head to Piedmont, then, to talk about slow tourism and discover the cycle paths of the Pinerolo area, their traversability and accessibility. Here we encounter the story of two friends, Luca Paiardi and Danilo Ragona, who have essentially decided to make a difference — for themselves and beyond. How? By showing us that we can broaden our perspective to discover a different dimension of travel, transforming it into an accessible and inclusive experience.
We encounter types of vehicles that may be unfamiliar to some, suited to people with motor disabilities. There are low, long bikes — the handbikes that are propelled with the arms — as well as the unicycle or electronic wheel that attach to wheelchairs, and then there are trekking wheelchairs. So, following in the wake of Luca and Danilo, we arrive at a more just and inclusive present.
Behind the Pinerolo Handbike Tour project are Luca Paiardi and Danilo Ragona, the founders of the association B-Free. You may have seen them on television as documentary makers on Sky or Rai 3. Ragona is a designer and his pursuit of beauty has led him over time to design wheelchairs with sensual lines, aesthetically striking but above all agile, capable of travelling on any road.
Paiardi, as well as being an architect specialising in accessibility and sustainability, is an indie-rock musician and a tennis champion.
The two meet at the spinal unit in Turin shortly after their accidents, at a crucial moment in their lives. They find themselves at a crossroads: choose the path of despondency or react and seek a new dimension built on challenges and movement. "Together we decided to explore new places, both mental and physical," they say. So they decide to found B-Free, an amateur sports association for social promotion that, through innovation and technology, aims to give people greater freedom of mobility. And this not only in the realm of sport and tourism but also in everyday life, in an outlook that applies to the population at large and in particular to those with reduced physical mobility and special needs.
For the initiative in the Pinerolo area, Paiardi and Ragona decide to involve Silvia De Maria, a Paralympic athlete who over the years has competed in alpine skiing, tennis and rowing. The three of them, on their handbikes and wheelchairs, covered several itineraries, analysing their morphology and accessibility and observing the territory with a careful eye in order to produce a study on the usability of the cycle paths.
As Luca Paiardi states, "The aim is to spread good practices and the idea that wherever a route or a place is more accessible it becomes very attractive and well frequented; in this project we analysed the cycle paths with muscle-powered or pedal-assisted handbikes, conceived not only as sporting equipment but also as ecological and safe means of transport for getting around. The purpose is to promote the tourist and cultural excellences of the Pinerolo area, to foster the development of cycle tourism, with particular attention towards people with disabilities who use a handbike, but also towards people who use different vehicles such as riders who work on cargo bikes".
The work has led to the mapping of 4 itineraries accessible to everyone: sportspeople with and without disabilities, amateurs or competitive athletes, families or elderly people.
GPX maps and descriptions of the routes (terrain type, gradients, points of interest and rest stops) are the information available on the dedicated website. The routes are the Via delle Risorgive running from Airasca to Moretta, the Ciclostrada from Pinerolo to Piossasco, the Via della Pietra from Bricherasio to Barge and finally the Bicipolitana running from the centre of Pinerolo to Malanaggio.