Transition day or as we call it..lemming day

caution cyclists training

Plenty of training for me, but Alex has had a virus all week and so has missed out. Today we move from Mellame  in the hills above Feltre to Castello Cabiaglio in the hills above Varese. We have a 4 hour drive alongside all the tourists doing exactly what we are doing.....being lemmings.

 I will miss watching the tree  in the tower, but not the regular church bell ringing!!

Mellame..our house is the pink one almost dead centre

Mellame church tower +tree!

Feltre..Giro stage city

Ciao...on the road to Faller

Sooo much pink

Our Castello accommodation is well know to us..it's the third time I've been there..the first time to check it out to ensure it was fine for the World Masters TT champs last year...it was! Because we are well known now we don't have to hang around waiting for our hostess to arrive..the side door will be unlocked as will our apartment.

2nd long ride of the holiday

Almost 80 km with 700m of climbing.....this time from where we are to Valdobbiadene...one of the centres of Prosecco wine making.

So once again..and with any excuse to have a mini rest, it was photo opp time......  On the way there and back I passed this cafe/restaurant where someone in the family spends the long winter hours carving wood and who also  seem very determined that their parking place is for the parking cars of clients and not for anything else!

wood  carving seems to be a local passtime

I was "P"edalling..but other actions beginning with "P" were clearly not welcome:

a loaner word...and yet not quite

Mountain weather is dramatic

So yesterday was a bit wet ..what an understatement..it was pretty dramatic actually and so was declared a rest from the bike day....but I had to test my new Garmin (other one died) so  I went out for a 20 min  spin in a dryish spell which sadly and probably predictably  quickly turned into a very wettish spell and I got soaked......despite it only getting really really wet for the final 5 minutes, I was a drowned rat. We even  had to buy some newspapers to stuff in my shoes!

Today  there were blue skies and I went out for a long ride..77km..I was pretty ruined by the end..it's the longest I've done in over a year.  But..any excuse for a pause and so here  are a few pix and since the Giro d'Italia passed through Feltre twice there are naturally  loads of pink pix...(the leader/winner gets to wear a pink jersey).

Palio advert and pink bikes..hope it got on TV!

the things you miss by always travelling in a car

Dolomiti in the background

so many quirky garden decorations..no gnomes though

2km up is where we are staying

just before the steep bit and where I start to falter

near Pedavena..with the famous birreria on the left

kermit rode the giro?

Here we go again

You know you're almost on hols when you cancel both Zwift and Netflix!  

After 5 weeks of long exhausting hours working for the Federal Election I am now over fat and under fit.  A somewhat extreme example of the long hours  is that on the last day of pre-polling I worked from 0730 until 23:45 and then started work  the next day ... election day.... at 0700, finishing that day at 2230! The end result was only 1 day on the bike in those 5 weeks...BUT I didn't get sick.  No touristy type places this year..just loads of training in an effort to be fit enough not to get dropped in the neutral part of the races in Austria!

This year's itinerary is firstly in Italy..and all in the north of the country...

Feltre is again our hub and we are super grateful to Isabella and Silvio, our hosts there who have  kindly allowed us to leave our extra stuff in their garage since last September.

I look forward to riding these particular roads again ( both photos borrowed from FB):

After staying in Feltre for a while..well actually Mellame a very small village waaay above Feltre, our first stop is a return to Castello Cabiaglio in the Varese area.
  

We're staying at the same place as last year which will allow me to return the scissors I managed to walk off with!  

Then we travel north and east  to Brentonico, south of Trento a small town   on the plateau above  lake Garda..hopefully I'll learn where to place the accent on the place name..BrentONico or BrentoNIco..I suspect the former although even my Italian teacher wasn't sure, 

Then a bit further north to Kurtinig an der Weinstrasse, which is again a very small town, hopefully within reach of some decent rides, followed by Bressanone AKA Brixen , then into the Dolomiti firstly to Colfosco AKA Calfosch(Ladin) and  Kolfuschg (German)  and finally Moena (Moena/Moyen) before returning briefly to Feltre to pick up bike boxes etc.  

Then into the serious part of the hols... Hartberg for racing , Budapest 'cos we have a few spare days, Sankt Johann in Tirol for racing  and finally Oudenaarde to ride the roads of the cobbled classics and also to visit  WW1 sites and monuments...we've been there before but have decided a re-visit  would be worthwhile.  
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This year since I'm not taking my time trial bike we have a fair amount of luggage allowance to play with..we've just got to make sure we don't get tempted and pack the kitchen sink!

I'm leaving on a jet plane....will I manage a points upgrade again??

more anon