Gravel · road · electric — seven days minimum
You have booked the trip. This page answers the one question the booking did not: where the bikes physically are, and how far that is from where you will be sleeping.
€40 a day for 4 to 7 days · €35 a day from 8 days
A week on a gravel bike: €280, collection included at the three points
Every hire company in this region says it covers the whole of Apulia. None of them tells you where the bike starts its journey. Ours starts in Lecce, in the heel, and that single fact reorganises the map into three bands that have nothing to do with the tourist map.
Three fixed points, all within twenty-four kilometres of each other. You pick the bikes up and drop them back with no surcharge, at a time you agree with us.
Between 78 and 114 kilometres from the base. We keep nothing here. What arrives is a van, and it has to drive back.
Between 109 and 151 kilometres. At the far end that is twice the Valle d'Itria, which is why people flying into Bari often do better collecting further south.
These are road distances from our base in Lecce, measured on the OpenStreetMap network with motor-vehicle routing. They are not straight lines and they are not cycling routes: they are the kilometres a van covers. The method and the queries are kept on file.
Santa Maria di Leuca, the last town in the heel, is closer than Ostuni. 70.8 kilometres against 78.0. The zone we treat as home reaches further than the first zone we deliver to, which is the clearest sign that the boundary is about service and not geography. That is why this page carries distances instead of a list of towns covered.
We deliver anywhere in Apulia. The price moves with three things: the number of bikes, how many days you keep them, and how far the address is from the base. It is worked out once we have the exact address, before anything is confirmed.
As an order of magnitude, €20 to €250 each way covers the whole region; €250 is the Gargano, which is 337 kilometres from the base one way. Each way means delivery and collection are two separate journeys and they add up — bikes brought to you and later taken away are charged twice. We put that in writing because reading one figure and being billed double is the fastest way to lose someone's trust.
The train. Since 1 August 2007 five rail operators in this region have carried bicycles free of charge on services marked with the bicycle pictogram: you ask the on-board staff for the supplement, which costs nothing, before you get on. No bag, no dismantling. Anyone landing in Bari or Brindisi and heading south is usually better off on a train than behind a van.
The direction of travel. Collect at one of the three free points and ride north and you pay one leg instead of two, because the start costs nothing and only the pick-up is charged. That is the second row of the diagram above: 302 kilometres of vehicle rather than 604, for the same Lecce-to-Bari itinerary.
Our own working figures include driving times, and we do not publish them as promises: they are model times, with no loading, no unloading, no August traffic and no second delivery on the same run.
There are no city bikes on this service. Somebody hiring for a week in Apulia covers real distances, and at that point a town bike stops being cheap and starts being a problem. The tables below are manufacturer figures: sizes, gearing, weight limits.
Aluminium frame, carbon fork, endurance geometry. It is built to be tolerable after five hours in the saddle rather than fast over ninety minutes.
Not suitable forCarrying luggage. There are no rack mounts and it will not take panniers. If you are travelling loaded, take the gravel bike.
The one we recommend here. The white lanes between the dry stone walls are not technical off-road, but the surface changes without warning and a narrow tyre punctures on them.
Not suitable forChasing speed on tarmac. Wide tyres cost you something in rolling resistance. What you get back is not having to walk the gravel sections.
Two different machines. The Trek weighs around 17 kg and its battery sits inside the frame, where it stays: charging happens with the bike next to the socket. The Rockrider E-ACTV 100 uses a 250 W rear hub motor rated at 45 Nm, and its 356 Wh pack lifts out.
Not suitable forThe Rockrider is rated to gradients of 10% and to about 500 metres of continuous climbing. That is enough for this region and not enough for the Gargano. Range should be counted against your longest day, not your average one.
Sizes are assigned on height and inside leg, not by eye: tell us how tall each rider is when you write. A lower saddle can be fitted to either gravel bike.
| Length | Non-assisted bike | Per day |
|---|---|---|
| 4 to 7 days | gravel or road | €40 |
| 8 days and over | gravel or road | €35 |
| Rockrider electric | supplement | +€5 |
| Trek electric | supplement | +€10 |
| Trek second battery | supplement | +€10 |
The minimum is seven days. A week on a gravel bike is €280; a fortnight is €490, because from the eighth day the rate drops a band.
The unit matters as much as the figure: panniers are charged for every day, pedals once for the whole booking. Over eight days that is a tenfold difference between two lines on the same list.
We are not a shop with the shutters up: you can write at any hour, including the middle of the night, and the collection time is agreed between us. There is no live availability calendar and no online payment on this website.
Because below that the transport costs more than the bikes. For a single day, moving a van is worth more than the hire itself, and in that case the honest answer is to collect at Lecce, San Foca or Calimera. From four or five days the arithmetic starts to work; at seven it always does. The minimum is not there to filter customers, it is the point below which you would be better off doing something else.
No, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise. There are three physical points and all three are in the Salento. Everywhere else is a delivery from Lecce, priced by distance. A company that claims a base everywhere in this region is very often describing the same arrangement in more flattering words.
For collection at the three points, a few days. For a long delivery, more, because the van has to fit around the hires already running. We do not publish a number of days, because it changes with the season and in July and August it changes week by week. Send your dates and we will tell you whether we can do it.
Yes, and if your route runs north that is the cheapest way to use us: collection costs nothing, so only the pick-up is charged — one leg instead of two. It is the second row of the diagram further up this page.
On regional services in this region it does, and it is free. Five operators have carried bikes at no charge since 1 August 2007 on trains marked with the pictogram: you board, ask the on-board staff for the zero-cost supplement, and nothing has to be dismantled or bagged. Outside this region the supplement exists. It is the first alternative to consider before paying for a long delivery.
None of the three. A copy of an identity document is what we ask for. On long hires we may ask for a small bank transfer in advance, which is a different thing from a deposit: it is not a guarantee against damage.
It depends how much unsurfaced road you intend to meet. If you stay on the provincial tarmac, the Domane is right. If you want to turn off between the dry stone walls, take the Checkpoint on its 42 mm tubeless tyres. An electric bike solves a different problem: two people with different legs who want to ride together.
May and September. August is the least windy month of the year and it is also the hottest — the two go together, and no month is easy on both counts. Between May and November the dominant airflow comes down the coast from the north, which means a southbound route inside that window generally has it pushing rather than resisting.
The exact address is what lets us price the delivery. If you do not have it yet, write the town anyway: we will tell you which band it falls into and what it adds to the total.
You can also send a WhatsApp message or call +39 320 4864478, or write to salentobikerental@gmail.com.
What you send is used to answer you and goes to no third-party service. How we handle it is set out in the privacy policy; the hire conditions are in the terms.