Monday

It was about 8c when we woke to rain this morning, with a plan of doing just 15 miles to the next aire. En route, we saw numerous cyclists kitted out in  Paris/Modena attire complete with support vehicles, Rachel ‘Googled’ it and it would seem that if you have a spare 5,500€ you can take part in this rather exclusive event.

The weather hadn’t improved by the time we arrived at our first pit stop at Falzarego, where the hotel was proudly displaying it’s altitude as 2,100 metres, but over the previous mile we had actually descended 100 metres and therefore had recorded our highest ever altitude in a van at 7,224’.

I’m sure Falzarego is a beautiful place, but the heavy cloud prevented us from seeing a decent view of anything other than what was actually in the van! We continued east to Cortina, where the weather got progressively worse and after a brief stop at basecamp #2 we decided to continue east. It was with some regret that we left the stunningly sharp rock structures we had seen yesterday and (when we could see them) this morning, but the forecast for that area was bad for the next few days and we have many more places to go!  After 50 miles of twisty, crumbling mountain roads we finally arrived at the small town of Ampezzo. The Dolomites here are not as dramatic, but it’s still lovely scenery, being more akin to our fells back home, and the weather was just how we like it, sunny and warm but not over 25c!