jul

Six more passes

Cortina D'Ampezzo, Veneto, Italy
Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Another gorgeous day with bright sunshine. Following another JH route I headed east out of Cortina and up Tre Croci pass, past Misurina Lake and up the private toll road to Drei Zinnen. The toll is 11€ for a bike but it is worth every cent!

The views are spectacular - the best yet. 360^o panoramas of all the wonderful Dolomites and down into the valleys. The road up is another steep 20% climb through about 15 harpins. The surface was perfect so Henry just ate them up. He loses some oomph after 2000m but still manages to pass slow Clio's.

I stayed quite a while at the top and although it was totally over run with walkers and climbers, it was still incredibly peaceful.

I took my time to get down the hill and was very aware of boiling the brake fluid again as the road was just as steep as the Lake Garda hairpins.

I then went down into Austria - okay - 200m into Austria just so I could take a photo of the border. I wanted to get a patch but they didn't have one so I just had to buy some Austrian chocolate instead.

I spent the rest of the day just doing a series of passes - up, down, up down... glorious!
I wanted to redo Giau's 27 hairpins but i wanted to do it from the opposite direction so I had to do 2 other passes just to get to it. Life is tough....

Hairpins are much better going up and Giau's did not disappoint. It was fairly late in the afternoon so there was barely any traffic and mostly just motorbikes so we had a dream run.

At Pocol, I stopped and looked at the Italian War Memorial which was a stunner. It's hidden in the woods and there's only one sign to hint that it's there. The lady at the tourist office didn't even tell me about it.

It is a huge structure built right on the edge of the precipice with brilliant views over Cortina. The inside is inscribed with hundreds of names of Italian soldiers on marble walls on many levels.

It was early evening by the time I reached the campsite with another great day of riding behind me. My time here is unfortunately over and I shall be sad to leave this stunning area.