Dit zijn de afstanden die er per dag gefietst zijn. Dag 4 was de rustdag.Dag 5 en 6 waren de dagen dat we rond hebben gereden in de Veluwe zonder bagage.
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Alps - Day 9 : Bread in a ditch
In the morning, it was clouded and Bram stayed in his bivy bag for a long time. Usually, I turned on my phone exactly at 7:45 and its sound would wake Bram would wake up. We would then be ready to leave around 8:30. Now I had already packed and eaten when Bram woke up at 8:30. To save some time he didn't have breakfast and quickly packed everything.
We started with a mountain right away. I had split the route description into 22 equal parts, and we were now one day behind schedule. The main reason it wasn't more was that we made fewer detours in the mountains (1-5% extra) compared to the 10-15% in the flat, urban areas.
After climbing for a while, Bram felt pretty hungry, so we cycled to the side of the road to eat. Bram took yesterday's bread and threw it on a concrete wall. The bread had such a thick crust that it could easily handle that. However, it landed, rolled for a while, and then disappeared. It had fallen in a mountain stream two meters lower. I was laughing hard. Bram went down to fetch the bread while I quickly took out the camera. Unfortunately, the batteries died. After removing the thick crust, the bread was still okay.
A bit further we had a nice view over a glacier. Meanwhile, I realized that I could use the batteries of my tail light to power the camera. I screwed off the light cover. The batteries in there turned out to be empty as well. I also lost the screw, so now I didn't have a tail light or a working camera. It was raining during the last hour of the climb. Trains were passing near the summit, with some open wagons for tourists. Our friend Koen and his girlfriend were traveling by train through the Alps, but we didn't see them.
On the summit, we remembered we could also take pictures using our phones. So here is a view of the top:
On the Passo del Bernina
A pleasant descent into Italy followed. Trains ran right through the next village, and we had to be careful not to get stuck in the tracks. We reached another busy road where we bought lots of food at a Lidl. Somehow we managed to eat only half of it. We fitted right in with the homeless people in the parking lot.
We bought way too much food at the Lidl
There followed another mountain. This one looked more like a French col. It went up in hairpin turns instead of straight over some mountain plain. We overtook a woman on a cycling vacation who had panniers and a trailer. With so much luggage climbing any mountain was an achievement. The mountain we were climbing was called 'Passo D'Aprica'.
Passo D'Aprica
On top of the Apica was a bicycle store and gas station. I went to ask for a new outer tire, my rear one still had the hole from the piece of glass a few days ago, and at some places the orange protective layer was becoming visible. Unfortunately, they didn't sell the right tires.
A nice descent followed before we reached today's last climb. This was the huge Gavia pass. In Ponte di Legno, two passes were indicated, but not their names. We followed the signs but realized we were going up the wrong mountain, so we turned around again. Back down we asked for directions, the man said we had been on the right road after all, apparently it split a bit higher up. He also said it was pretty late for us to go up there.
We started climbing again and this time discovered the fork in the road. On the map the road was depicted as a white line, which meant it would be quiet. After a while we came across a truck that was stuck in a corner. A car going down was waiting. A few 100 meters later we saw signs 'forbidden for trucks more than 3500 kg'. The road got very small and steep, two cars wouldn't even be able to pass each other. If the truck driver continued he would get into real trouble.
We got our own problems on the pass. It was cold, drizzling, and very steep. It was a nice road tough, with new asphalt and hardly any cars. It looked a lot like the Bonette we had climbed last year in France, it was just as cold and tough. The fact that many drivers were waving and encouraging us also didn't predict much good. After climbing for over two hours we took a photo.
A mountain hut, it would be nice to camp there sometime
The last part of the climb involved many tunnels. Most were short, but there was one long one. We rode into a black hole. Suddenly there was only gray fog around us. We switched our lights on and it was hard to keep our balance without seeing much. Before us we only saw darkness and a weak reflection of the asphalt. Because we were going uphill we weren't cycling fast and our headlights gave almost no light. It was all very spooky and something we had only experienced during cycling vacation. After a while we turned around. We saw a diffuse semi-circle where we had entered. A car came up, we started ringing our bells as much as possible hoping the people inside would hear us. Luckily that worked. By the time we reached the top it was almost dark. We quickly put on warm clothes and took a picture.
Fogg on the Gavia pass.
The descent was fun, in the dark, with only our headlights to guide us.
View during the descent
Unfortunately, the village of Bormio didn't have a campsite. It was already dark, so we needed to camp in the wild. A kilometer farther, it wasn't as densely built and we found a nice hill to 'sleep' on. It was still drizzling. It rained the entire night, so we didn't get much sleep.
Distance cycled : 156 km.