The Flag and the Three Kings
Good morning Folkriders,
As the essence of our brand dictates, we can never resist the temptation to follow trails steeped in local folklore. On our tours, we often find ourselves retracing the footsteps of knights, wizards, mythical creatures, and lost legends, seeking to rediscover the charm and evocative power of countless small places that conceal treasures both great and small. It's folkriding at its purest, as we understand it, because it draws on documented history and oral tradition, chronological facts and intriguing nuances, real episodes and captivating images. If everything is on-theme, in our case just right for the Christmas season, so much the better.
Take for example the GR116 T LASER WAVE , ready to depart from Busto Arsizio Station. What journey will our 80s bike take us on, being here, just a few kilometers from Lake Maggiore and Malpensa Airport? By now you know us: we look for patterns, we color them, and we in turn let them color us. We did our research, we got inspired, and today we're in a city that not only represented an important textile hub in Lombardy, but also offers truly unmissable curiosities. And special characters.
From Busto Arsizio, perhaps right where we are, near the train station of a town where Art Nouveau style dominates the oldest streets, tradition has it that the poet and healer El Dutur Bandera set out on his travels. A brief aside is in order here. The expression "Dutùr," in the Lombard dialect, especially in its more recent meaning, doesn't exactly have a positive connotation. It refers, somewhat mockingly, to people who flaunt their knowledge and wisdom, acquired after years and years of practicing their profession. It also, of course, colloquially refers to someone who has studied, who owes their position to hours and hours spent studying. Well, for Bandera, both meanings were spot on!
But who was he? Born blind in one eye to a humble, tyrannical family, he demonstrated from a very young age a passionate interest in the art of healing and in daring adventures. Evidently misunderstood by his community, he moved first to Milan and then to distant lands of the East, where he learned the secrets of healing and saw incredible worlds.
When he returned to Busto, somewhat vainly, he began to wander from tavern to tavern, telling of his exploits, attracting the curiosity—often, even the hilarity—of his fellow townspeople. We really like to imagine him like this, breathless and a little pompous through the streets of his city, while we, smiling, nimbly meander along the GR 116 T LASER WAVE , gradually discovering the little gems of this historic town. From the station, in fact, within a few hundred meters, the story unfolds. Suppose, for example, we were to reconnect with needle and thread—and how could it be otherwise!—the Textile Museum , formerly the Cotonificio Ottolini, with the Art Deco Ottolini-Tovaglieri villa , which once belonged to the founder of the cotton mill of the same name. We are on streets that bear witness to a past of splendour for Busto Arsizio's industrial bourgeoisie, which intertwine wonderfully with places symbolic of a more distant and, if you like, even slightly more imaginative past. Alessandro Manzoni , moving specifically to the literary sphere, often stayed with his family at Casa Tosi , a guest of his friend and cleric Luigi Tosi, who later became Bishop of Pavia. A plaque on Via Carlo Tosi commemorates this friendship, which greatly influenced and inspired the poet, even leading him to compose his Observations on Catholic Morality . All within a few hundred meters. Just two more pedal strokes, in fact, and from Casa Tosi we arrive at the Edicola di San Carlo Borromeo , built around 1610 as a crucial passageway for processions and blessings of the surrounding countryside.
And here our journey, symbolically or not, changes color, spirit, and form. We pause briefly. The GR 116 T LASER WAVE is ready, in its multidimensional spirit, to make this leap with us: we are leaving history behind to reconnect with legend, a legend steeped in gold, incense, and myrrh. Sound familiar? Of course it does: they were the gifts the Three Wise Men brought with them when, tired, numb, and hungry, they found hospitality in Busto Arsizio, on one of the nights of that long journey in the wake of the comet that would lead them to the lands of the East. In this same Busto whose streets we have tasted, the Magi found comfort from the local urchins, who refreshed them with polenta, bruscitti (wonderful finely minced meat, cooked in herbs over a slow fire and drizzled with good red wine, typical of these areas) and mulled wine. According to the myth, Melchior, Balthazar and Gaspar never forgot the welcome they received from the people of Busto Arsizio, returning there many times over the centuries, even incognito, and passing through on their final journey to Cologne, where their relics would find their final resting place.
In Cologne They arrived starting from Milan, from the Basilica of Sant'Eustorgio, where it was always said that the Ark of the Magi was kept before Emperor Frederick Barbarossa ordered its transfer to his kingdom.
How much history, how much folklore, how much inspiration lurks within us, as we ride the GR116 T LASER WAVE towards Milan, precisely towards Sant'Eustorgio, creating with our needle and thread a precious silk road, full of surprises, towards the capital.
Leaving Busto Arsizio is actually quite simple. Heading towards Parco Alto Milanese , we come across a long cycle path, nestled between the park (which awakened our gravel instincts; we could barely restrain ourselves from venturing out) and the E-Work Arena, a modern temple of women's volleyball, previously named after Maria Piantanida , a great pioneer of Busto Arsizio's sport and one of the very first examples of a multi-disciplinary athlete, having competed successfully in both track and field and basketball, and having coached for a long time in Pro-Patria gymnastics.
From the white and blue striped colours typical of the symbolic club of Busto, we quickly move on to the equally characteristic – and football-related – lilac of Legnano , a city that smells of ancient cycling (the professional team of the same name in red and green colours that wrote the history of this sport at least until the mid-1960s) and modern (the Bicipolitana which connects the cardinal points of the city in a capillary way).
So many elements converge. Right on the Bicipolitana, lilac still appears before our eyes, being the color of the line we use to reach the Visconti Castle of Legnano , which seems embedded in the history of the bicycle itself, so much so that to get there we use the cycle path named after Alfonsina Strada , the first woman to participate in the Giro d'Italia in 1924, and to leave we instead take the one named after Gino Bartali . Bartali, Legnano, a pairing that requires no further discussion, other than a sense of respect and historical pride on our part.
The journey we've undertaken, we understand more and more with every turn of the wheel, gives us no respite. The images, landscapes, and colors follow one another in constant twists and turns, from Art Nouveau to Medieval, from urban to industrial, passing through rural. This is especially true if we consider that from the Visconti Castle we take the Olona Greenway , another little gem suspended between historical relics and a love of gentle mobility. Following the Olona stream, heading toward Parabiago —another town symbolic of the footwear industry—we pass floodplains suspended between the river and its banks, green areas rich in wildlife, and the remains of the old mills that once powered the entire agricultural and industrial chain of the area. In Parabiago, the Oasi Parades represents a turning point in our journey: there, where, according to legend, a local farmer used to reply in dialect "thank you, par adés" to customers who didn't pay him promptly for his work, we choose to cross the Villoresi Canal to the north rather than continue straight toward the center of Nerviano. The Villoresi cycle path, which became operational in 2010, is now a standard for training cyclists, with its 64 km from Monza to Somma Lombardo. Or vice versa, as in our case! But we don't stay on the Villoresi for long; we head straight for Rho , first passing the hamlet of Garbatola (if you can, visit its Festa Granda, which celebrates the end of summer every year between late August and early September), and arriving in a profoundly renovated city, thanks primarily to the grand pavilions of its Fiera. Even in Rho, the bicycle seems to know how to make a statement: according to popular etymology, the name clearly harks back to the word ruota (wheel), which, if you look closely, also features prominently in the city's logo. And staying on topic, we're passing the streets of Ciclistica Birighello, a historic local youth cycling club that has been cultivating local talent for years. What a duel with the black and whites of US Nervianese!
Making its way through the healthy sporting rivalries of these places, the GR 116 T LASER WAVE feels the approach of the city lights, of its city. From Pero, passing through Molino Dorino—which ideally concludes our Via dei Mulini—we reach the Gallaratese neighborhood in a flash, just in time to enjoy a display of street art among the buildings. The GR 116T LASER WAVE happily joins in the waltz of color, the pedaling still smooth and light, as if we were riding on stardust. We don't even realize we've moved from the lively outskirts to the elegance of the city center, all transparent, crystalline, in the tranquil folds of a Sunday morning.
And we are sure of it, in Piazza XXIV Maggio, we heard a speech by Bandera in the air, we felt the taste of bruscitti again, perceiving the presence of the finishing line
In Sant'Eustorgio , a stone's throw from Milan's Darsena, a stone's throw from the Columns of San Lorenzo, our journey, rich in stories, characters, and adventure, comes to a close. A journey, we're happy to say, that took place on many well-maintained, well-connected, comfortable, and at times even evocative roads and cycle paths. It was as if we had truly traveled a Silk Road, scented with gold, incense, and myrrh, in the wake of a shooting star.
By bicycle, and only by bicycle, dear folkriders, can you live a similar dream, experiencing our time and, at the same time, traversing distant eras and places within it, from a bright dawn to the glow of evening.
When a day becomes a century, without ceasing to be a fleeting moment, a flash worth chasing.
The link to the track is https://www.komoot.com/it-it/tour/2721877377