Sunday 28th of August 2011

Up about 9:30am and the breakfast was all out on the table. No cereal but plenty of bread and a brioche or two and the nice lady owner came and made me a coffee with hot milk from the Lavazza pod machine in the kitchen. So after carbing up I got changed and got the bike out of the back of the car. 15 mins later I set off for a wander.

I wanted to head down towards the end of the lake to see if I could see any of the buildings that were submerged when they flooded the valley but this wasn't too far away so wasn't going to take very long. After a quick photo there I followed what was obviously one of the old roads towards Fonzaso.

Not sure it's the church but some building remains from the valley they flooded to make the lake

I thought I could do a loop there before heading back. Before I got to Fonzaso though there was a road block. I'd spotted a sign for a bike race but not twigged on the date that it was today. Not to worry I didn't need to get through. I watched for 5 minutes and it was a kids race (maybe adults later?) and I don't think it was a particularly long course either as I saw the same course car from the race the other week a couple of times while I was stood there. Still, start them young...

I headed back where I came from as it was mostly pretty flat and I wasn't in any rush to do any big hills. I thought about doing the reverse of the Faller route as I'd been twice down the hill from that side but not up it but I decided against it and headed back along the valley to Arsie, the nearest town to the B+B. I'd looked at the map previously, one of those funny papery things and thought about heading up the hill side for a couple of villages and see how the road went. The altitude numbers on the map seemed to go up pretty quickly but without the computer to tell me the average gradient at each stage I was thinking it was going to be pretty steep and after the 12% sections at the start of Croce d'Aune I was a little wary. The road seemed ok though and I could keep in my last but one gear. I took it pretty steady keeping the heartrate about 80-85% and stopped on a few occasions to take a photo when I could see back down to the valley. In the sun it was quite hot but there were occasional bits of shade and it did cool a little as I got higher.

I'd seen the Col di Perer on the map at about 1000m so I thought that would be a good place to aim for. Eventually I got there and sat on one of the wooden picnic tables in the village and ate some food and checked the map again. The route continued to climb up to something like 1,400m so I thought I'd just carry on and see how I went on, eventually reaching Cima di Campo and the bar/restaurant there. I went inside to get a coke but I could only see warm ones set on shelves and there were about half a dozen people at the serving point all waiting and looking bored so I went back outside.

A couple of bikers were there and I stuck up a brief conversation with them. She had what looked like a low to medium range mountain bike but his bike was a little more interesting. He'd gone for the retro style and retro material and it was steel with shifters at the end of the drops. He suggested I try it for weight and it felt heavy, well after my bike. I offered he try pick up my bike and he was surprised how light it was. After a brief muddled conversation about American and Chinese bikes he said arrivaderci and went inside and I set off back down the hill.

Altogether about 3 hours of pedalling time, longer than I was expecting to do but it was very nice - not too steep or too hot.

The lake I'd set off from 

The route is used as part of a car time trial - hence all the coloured tyres

At last - at the top!

I chilled out for a while watching the F1 when I got back and then later on the MotoGP 125s or whatever they're called now. Dinner was overlooking the lake at Miralago who had the biggest pizza menu I've ever seen however I still had the penne all'arrabiatta but with a mixed salad and 25cl of the house red which went straight to my head. So much so infact that the noisy random kids playing on the swings weren't really bothering me despite the racket. Dolce was tiramisu and it looked rather impressive but needed more coffee to give it a kick.

Tried to get an early night but they were showing some crap film and I ended up watching half of it before the tv signal went off about 11pm. Perhaps that's lights out time here...?