But first things first. On 28 November, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry published a decree standardizing the purposes and characteristics of forest roads. So far, so unsuspicious. But somewhere in there was a sentence that particularly upset motorized fans of non-asphalted roads and also some mountain bikers: normal traffic is prohibited on forest and forestry roads.

The motorcyclist camp cried out the loudest. Riding on natural roads has a long tradition and is the preferred leisure activity of thousands of people. Certain mountain bikers feared that their passion would also fall under the ban. An online petition was launched and articles appeared whose authors argued why this ban should not be allowed. However, there were also people in the mountain bike community who had not even heard of the ban. A position that proved to be the most sensible in hindsight.Finally, on December 16, the day the deadline for appeals against the decree expired, the ministry responsible spoke out again: it was still up to the provinces to regulate who was allowed to ride on roads with natural surfaces and who was not. A driving ban was never planned. Much ado about nothing was the title of Tesino bike journalist Marco Toniolo's blog post on this affair. And because it sounds so good in Italian: "Tanto rumore per nulla!". The whole thing is a big misunderstanding, explains Ernesto Hutmacher, the bike hotel pioneer from Tuscany.

So the bike ban was in place for two weeks and fortunately only in the minds of certain bike enthusiasts.