The route starts from Pianoro railway station, that can be reached from Bologna using the bike + train service.

You start pedaling up the Savena valley. After about seven kilometers, after the gorges section, the climb to Livergnano begins on the left, a narrow asphalt road that in a few but hard kilometers (2.4 km with an average of 12.5 percent) leads up to the village with houses built against the Pliocene buttress. In one of the warehouses carved partly into the rock is the small but interesting Winter Line Museum, full of artifacts and evidence from World War II.

Continue for a few kilometers along the Futa state road to the fork on the left for Barbarolo. When you reach the church, continue along the beautiful scenic road that leads to Fornace, where, at the fork, you must keep to the right. About two kilometers later, turn left to take via Monte delle Formiche, a cartroad that, with a challenging climb, leads up to the summit of the Mount that stands out in front of us and from where you can enjoy a beautiful panorama from its 638 meters of height.

The Mount, known for its sanctuary and for the natural phenomenon of winged ants that every year in September come here to die by the thousands, has various points of interest, such as the hermit’s cave or the small cemetery with the tomb of Luigi Fantini, the well-known speleologist and palethnologist of the early 1900s who dedicated his life to geologically exploring these territories.

Once you have descended from the Mount and reached the locality of Cà di Pippo, it is possible to make a short detour to the hamlet of Tazzola to visit the small Botroids Museum, a collection of fossils and geological artifacts collected by Fantini.

Continuing on, after a short technical downhill stretch on trails and dirt roads, you reach Zena Castle, watched in full view by the nearby Heir Tower.

Past the castle, you return to the asphalt road of Via Zena, and after about a kilometer the route turns right onto Via Gorgognano. After another kilometer there may be an interesting detour on the left (700 meters) that leads to the Whale of the Zena Valley, a peculiar fiberglass artifact made by students of the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna depicting precisely a whale in the place where a local farmer found the remains of a cetacean dating back to the Pliocene.

Continue along Via Gorgognano to the point where the trail leaves the paved road to enter, on the left, along a side valley. We enter the valley keeping the stream on our right and then, after about a kilometer, cross to the other bank. Continue a little more on the valley floor until you take the final climb that, with a series of hairpin bends always on a dirt road surface, reaches the paved road of Via Donini. Turn left and then immediately left onto via della Collina and in a couple of kilometers you reach Pianoro near the station.