visit.Gemona

The Tagliamento River
and the springs of the Ledra

Information and details on the route

  • place start: Gemona, 270m
  • straighten length: 0Km
  • height altitude difference: 88m
  • schedule duration: 3h 00m

If you love the outdoors, this cycling itinerary up the banks of the Tagliamento and  Ledra Rivers will be perfect for you. This itinerary offers an opportunity to enjoy the highly varied landscape along with some
healthy exercise!

The cycling route

Head down northward from the centre of Gemona to the village of Ospedaletto in the plain, with a view of the foothills of the Alps. Cross highway 13 and take the gravel road up the bank of the Tagliamento River.
Here you can see the waterworks conveying a portion of the water from the river into two canals. The first of these, dating back to the Middle Ages, is known as Roggia Plovia, while the second, Ledra-Tagliamento, was opened up in the early nineteenth century to irrigate the upper plain of Friuli.
Continue along the bank by the river in a wide gravelly plain, colonised here and there by pioneering vegetation, including such endemic species as Matthiola carnicaCentaurea dichroantha and Leontodon berinii.

At Braulins bridge, follow highway 512 for a short way until you come to the route along the river bank again. Here the bank of the Tagliamento is covered with dense, impenetrable bush consisting of bitter willow and sea-buckthorn, characterised by the presence of imposing Peucedanum verticillare or milk parsley plants.

After the underpass below motorway A23, this little road joins a municipal road behind Colle Carantan, passing to the west of the rise on which Osoppo Fort is built and into the town of the same name. From here, cross over highway 463 and continue along the municipal road, which then turns to the right. Pass a busy road, the Ledra-Tagliamento Canal and motorway A23 (via the underpass) and continue along a gravel road to a large fenced-in area containing 12 water intakes and the lifting and distribution centre
of Consorzio Acquedotto Friuli Centrale. The route continues beyond the Ledra River, turning to the left three times in a row to reach the ruins of an early twentieth-century hydroelectric power plant.

The contrast between the two waterways is very clear where they come together. The Rio Bosso, straightened and channelled, with its slow waters lined with reeds, is home to the fish species typical of drainage canals, such as chub, tench, and bleak. The winding Ledra River, on the other hand, is characterised in this stretch by dense riverside vegetation including willow, popular, alder and elm trees. Its fish species are the classic ones characteristic of spring-water:  brown trout, marble trout and graylings.

Continuing up the Ledra, we soon come to highway 13, and then return to Gemona.

Chosen for you
FVG ambassadors

La spiaggia segreta - Etelca Ridolfo

Activities on the Tagliamento

Bicycle touring

Activities on the Tagliamento

Fishing