Sunday 4th of September 2011

Today was officially rest day for the hotel and after the big rain storm last night I assumed it would still be wet this morning. I made it for breakfast about 9:30am and was asked if I would like some lunch, I replied yes. Minutes later I had a small cheese and a small ham sandwich and half a banana. Better than nothing and fit in the back pockets on the jersey easily. Eventually the weather cleared up enough for me to want to go out for a wander.

I headed down the valley to the south with the intention of just seeing what was there. After going wrong a couple of times (so much for satnav) I eventually found a nice road to head down. Soon I got to the tunnel which heads north/south and is many kilometers long. Bikes aren't allowed and I wouldn't want to ride in there but there was the old road to the side of the tunnel so I followed that.

Entry to the tunnel - think it says this one is 3km long

Instead I followed the old road - to nowhere

A little further down the road after a nice little incline and a few hairpins there was another tunnel but having seen no traffic at all I was happy to go through this once I'd put my lights on. Once through the tunnel the road dropped again with hairpins and the gps was showing a -12% gradient. I carried on to see what was at the end of it. The answer was not much. The road just stopped and turned into a pavement with a very steep gradient downwards. On a mountain bike I might have followed it but I decided to turn back. At this point it started to rain a little so I got back to one of the small galleria that I'd passed through and stopped there to have some food. I hadn't been going long but it was lunch time.

By the time I set off again the rain was a little stronger so I basically got a move on back to the hotel - a time trial in the wet. By the time I got to the hotel it had lightened up a bit but I was already wet. I'd seen a road behind the hotel leading up to Bormio 2000 ski station so thought I'd head up there and the climbing would warm me up a little. Bormio is about 1200m so I thought I would get to 1500m and see how things were going. By this level I already thought about adding 500m to the Bormio level and then thought I might as well carry on to the top at 1980m at which point it started raining again. I quickly ate some biscuits at the top and then set off back down. The speed and trees and presumably rain upset the GPS a little and it didn't record the descent properly but the ascent had been made. It was only a short 8km and is often added on at the end of a days cycling around here but it was a nice ride and only a couple of cars to be seen once past the first village. Interestingly I hit 66km/h on the downhill which wasn't bad considering it was wet and I wasn't pedalling very much. I don't have any pictures going up to Bormio 2000 as I didn't stop on the way up and it was raining and cloudy on the way down but I'll take some pictures next time I take the phone up there. There are some nice views of the town to be had from the ascent.

GPS - you can see it lost track of where it was on the descent 

Once back I got showered to warm up and then went down for cake, before going back to the bike corner and giving the bike a good clean down.

Dinner - for the foodies reading this... was excellent. The tagliatelle was a strange mix with hot olives but the guinea fowl was absolutely gorgeous and the best thing I've eaten out since being away. If I recall correctly I had tiramisu for the third day in a row.

Didn't think guinea fowl would taste so nice