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@zigbit
I rode it with a friend and we were at the younger, less experienced end of the rider cohort but we both had an incredible time. I found we quickly settled into a routine of bumping into the same riders every day who were going at a similar pace. It was our first big bikepacking trip, but we'd done plenty of shorter Welsh/English trips before. It still remains my all time favourite trip and I'd love to ride it again someday. This has got me reminiscing, massive thought dump below:
Distance - 740km over 6.5 days riding (135km of which was gravel). 21k m of climbing for the week. The Via del Sale was my favourite stretch, though I'm not sure if the route still goes that way, there were some bad floods that washed away a lot of roads last year or the year before. We were both reasonably fit but had some long days in the saddle, 10-12hrs daily. Biggest day was ~130km with 3600m climbing.
Food - plentiful, delicious and good value. Didn't eat a single bad meal the whole trip. Italy was especially good. Figs! Keep an eye out for fig trees, they're everywhere and perfectly ripe in early September, so delicious!!
Water - I took 2 x 750ml bottles and didn't feel short at any point. Plenty of streams, village water fountains, and cafes to fill up at.
Camping - I think we had 3 ad hoc nights in campsites (joining other riders), 2 wild camps (easy to find, quiet spots right off the road in most places), and a night in a B&B after the one wet day. Took a tarp between us, with bivy bags and 0° rated down bags, nice and comfortable all week.
Trains - We flew to Turin at the start with hard case bike boxes and left them at the hostel we stayed in. At the end we rode a little further along the coast from Nice and got a train back to Turin from Ventimiglia, which was very straight forward and cheap. Well worth it to avoid to hassle of finding cardboard boxes to pack up your bike, which has been stressful on other trips. Having said that I don't know if the rules have changed a little and now exclude flying to the Rally?
Weather - largely warm in the days (20°+) but down towards freezing overnight, especially higher up. We had one day of rain and I was really glad of a jersey/fleece/insulated jacket/waterproof combo coming down a big descent into Demonte, hands got very cold without waterproof gloves!
Bike - I'd echo the comment about going for low gearing. I had an 11-40t cassette with a 38/22 manual shift double and was really glad of the full range. Glad I took spare brake pads too. I took a decent sized power bank for my phone, glad I did as the dyno hub didn't generate enough power to charge a phone crawling up climbs at 10km/hr. Navigation wasn't complex, we did it off a couple of phones with no Garmin, it largely consisted of pedalling up a col for 3 hours, whizzing down the other side then pedalling up the next for another 3 hours.