Ride Day 10: Lago di Levico to Sorriva

This is Friday's ride.

We are now starting into the serious and beautiful part of the Dolomites.  We have a few days of some pretty serious climbing.  The hills in the Dolomites are not as long as the alps, but they tend to be very punchy -- steep.

Morning came early and we were on the road by 0530 a.m.  But first we had to figure out how to get out of the campground.  The place is fenced and locked and secured and, I suppose assured to keep the lowlifes out.  That’d be us.  The electronic gate didn’t work and we couldn’t get any code to work.  So I jimmied it.  Probably broke it.  But it was 0530 and nobody else was around except a Hungarian guy who was riding the same basic route as us.  He thanked us for helping with his escape!

We found a café that was open shortly after 0600 and knew that we had to stop.  Good coffee helped brighten the spirits that had been darkened the night before.  Soon we set off for our big day of climbing into the high Dolomites.  There were no “name” passes today, and we rode only 75 km to Sorriva, but we climbed about 2000 meters and the climbs were brutal.  The average was 10% but there were long sections of double-digit ramps, some approaching 20%.  We had to walk at one section of rocky 18%.

I think that I have heard this in at least 20 different languages, almost always spoken with absolute glee by a man who is surprised by a tandem riding by: “She isn’t peddling!”  It is like the joke that goes with a tandem and it is always followed by a huge guffaw.  Today there was some old Italian guy hiking with his wife and he simply shouted it out, smiling the entire time like a cat eating shit.  It is all so very fun.  We are a sight to behold – you don’t see tandems in Europe very often and never touring.  We typically respond appropriately with me giving an “Oh crap, thanks for the heads up” type of response.

Here's a collection of photos from today's beautiful and rewarding ride:

Rocenno Italy

A chilly but beautiful moning

Lost, as usual...

Castelonuevo.  Doesn't look that new to me...

Climbing into the high Dolomites

A typical road for our ride

Ooops, lost again.  Damned GPS

This a very agriculturally intensive area, more than just grape vines

Mr. Hoffman's services are needed here!

A random village where we stopped at a bar for water for our bidons.  The locals are always
so very happy to help and hear our stories!

Every village has a church, or two

We got stopped here for about 1/2 hour while they cleared a landslide from the road

Crossing some river and hoping that our climbing is near done...

We arrived in Sorriva in mid-afternoon.  Toasted we were.  We’re staying at a B&B and as soon as the alimentary opens at 1530 we headed down for some goodies.  Both of us are really tired.  But the B&B is a mastery of architecture.  The photo doesn't show it, but it is very cool.

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Outside our B&B -- that's where we go tomorrow

Home sweet home for tonight

The B&B guy has not shown up.  I called him and found out where the key was hidden, so we got in fine, but who knows.  It is kind of nice having the place to ourselves.   I’ve always found B&B’s to be awkward in a big way, hoping for the best with this one.  

Tomorrow we’re over the Croce d’Aune, which isn’t too much climbing from here but will probably be very steep (they make their roads steep here).  Then we will probably shorten the ride by cutting off a big section so that we can ride straight to Valdobiedenne downhill.  We are both really tired and it could be just the thing.  We’ll see how we feel tomorrow.  For now, we need to find some food in this very, very tiny town.  We think that we saw a bar up the road…but we slogged over to a pizza joint for some food and were pleasantly surprised with a great dinner.

Lorie's dinner

Mine...

Ciao!