Bike Packing #2

This bike packing trip was to be  of a shorter distance with more climbing and only overnight stays.  There were no trains so no hope of a "get out of jail free" card in case of an incident or bad weather. 

Day 1 of a 3 day trip...58km and 645m climbing

Mellame to Feltre to San Gregorio nelle Alpi to Sospirolo to Sedico

The route!

Pre coffee stop at about 35km

you just never know what you're going to see!

Having gone up to Mis I had then to go to Mas...to cross this glacier meltwater river

Our silo art is better!

                                       
and on to Sedico where my hotel turned out to be situated above a group of offices/banks etc.  Finding the way in was a challenge!  Nice place though with a huge room and very accommodating staff as I arrived VERY early.

Hotel Nord Est at Sedico

Day 2 43km 746m climb

Sedico to Trichiana over Passo San Boldo to Follina and finally through the Prosecco vineyards to Valdobbiadene

Good weather again despite dire warnings of rain, hail, damaging winds and thunderstorms.  However I set off early  in an effort to avoid the worst....actually nothing else to do in Sedico anyway!!  Your heart sinks when trip advisor puts a visit to the library as 1 of it's "things to do"!

looking back ...any old excuse for a breather!

and so onto Passo San Boldo...such a great ride...a less steep climb on this side although as an ex-Orienteer I always hate it when, on a climb, the road goes steeply down losing much of the height you've gained and then goes steeply up the other side of the gully..what happened to gently contouring??!!

                                           

The history of the feat of engineering on the south side is most interesting...during WW1 the Austro-Hungarian army was faced with  getting over a steep ridge ..it faced a long march to  either end of what is a looong ridge...left..right or....??  

The approach from south side, which is the direction they were coming is up a long steep gully  until it reaches a pretty vertical cliff and yet the remaining  distance was not too far.....so the engineer in charge chose the 3rd option.....carve a road into the cliff where an old path had been.  Since it had to deal with army vehicles, the slope of the road could not be more than 12%.  In 100 days, using what was I guess local "slave" labour the road was created..... 
check out this link:https://www.dangerousroads.org/europe/italy/863-passo-san-boldo-italy.html#:~:text=It%20dates%20back%20to%20Roman,in%20less%20than%20three%20months.

Traffic is normally governed by lights at each tunnel but not while I was going through, so much horn blasting by all cars.

Castle Brando near  Follina :

I remember this place very well ...Castello Brando is high above the pretty village of Cison di Valmarino.

Probably about 10 years ago my language teacher had said there was a really good event happening atCastle Brando during the weekend  so my sister, son and I went to look.  It was hot, the climb up from the car parking was steep and tiring and when we got there the event wasn't much  anyway so before we escaped downhill we queued for an ice cream.    

It was a longish queue but the list of things to buy and prices were all up to see and we decided what we wanted as we waited.  However the family perhaps 3 ahead of us didn't bother to decide until they hit the head of the queue and then proceeded to have a long, heated/involved/vigorous discussion as to what they did or didn't want.  

I spat the dummy and we left without an ice cream!  We stopped at a cafe lower down...no queue there thankfully.  Haven't been there since!

and so with a brief stop at Follina for coffee iI biked on through the Prosecco vines to Valdobbiadene.  Once again my hotel was hard to find but was nice although the room was very small.  I celebrated being in Valdobbiadene by enjoying an Aperol Spritz...as you do....!

Day 3  45km 502m climb Valdobbiadene to Mellame via Feltre

I know this ride well  and and it's not very scenic so it was always going to be a bit of a grind. My usual route is to go up the east bank of the  River Piave until just south of Vas, cross a rather rickety bridge, and use a side road until it meets the very busy road west of the river.  However signs soon told me that the tunnel on my favoured road was closed...I opted to see if the side road around the tunnel (cyclists only) was open but sadly it too was closed....so I added an extra km or 2 to the trip which was silly since there was a raging head wind of reportedly 12kph gusting to 28kph.

So what I had to do was use the less favoured road and fight both the traffic and the head wind all the way til the road bent to a more east/west direction.  It was scarey and especially when I rode across the rather long bridge across the river with a howling gale pounding me on my right side and pushing me into the traffic.  Actually the main problem was the unpredictability of the strength of the wind...it was blustery.

I survived without incident..in part due to the respect motorists in Italy show to cyclists (generally speaking).

Sooo...will I do another? I finished this one much less exhausted than #1, so I think 3 days is my current limit. Research is happening...if so, I think it will be up near the 'dolomiti with  a train trip up to beyond Trento to start and finish the ride.