It is a shorter blog today as we did not take many photos and I can sum the ride up as … very wet.

We rode 110 km leaving Lake Garda up a hill I have ridden twice before. It had a special name we refer to it as that I cannot possibly commit to writing here. I’ve not done it with a loaded bike so it was harder again. I had planned a different route out but we tried to trim km due to the weather.

This is looking back towards Lake Garda 1 km into the climb. You can see how bleak the lake looks.

Northern Italy has had numerous floods in the past week and that was evident today with rivers raging and obviously higher than usual when you see playground equipment in the waters.

At Rovereto our original plan had been to visit an old cliffside church but due to the rain and the fact it was closed for renovation we moved in a more direct line to our destination.

On the edge of Rovereto there is a marvellous long distance bike path following the Adige River, and we would be on this path for most of the day. In fact I estimate we spent over 100 km of our 110 km ride on sealed bike paths.

This was certainly safer for us, as wet days in roads means you get road water sprayed every time a vehicle passes.

We were wet enough without that additional hazard.

At this point on the path were the cycling figurines and counter showing over 900,000 people had been through since opened. It also showed 11 people for the day.

Later on around Trento there was a similar sign and counter showing 1.8 million users and over 200 users for the day.

Finding shelter was not easy. The path had many signs stating we were on EuroVelo 7, the Sun route 🤣🤣. There were plenty of resting spots in the open, with bike racks, but not under cover.

Here we stopped under shelter at a recycling centre.

We stopped at a supermarket to grab some food, but stopping made us colder and we started shivering. Despite having a $500 highly rated cycling rain jacket water still makes its way through so I threw my best cycling jacket on over my thermals and under my rain jacket to ensure I looked like Michelin man and to generate more upper body warmth.

I also had a wooden skull cap and a rain cap under my helmet.

I had over booties on my feet and wool sox to keep the wet feet warm.

We needed to keep moving and spin the legs more to generate more body heat, which we did.

There was a spot for a few km where the rain eased to a drizzle about 30 km from Bolzano.

We had ridden through many vineyards and stone fruit orchards.

There were high rocky cliffs and hills on either side, many with waterfalls from the rain.

We saw lots of other bike packing cyclists today…maybe 100-120? They were all heading in the opposite direction, which was downhill, we were the ones on the uphills and only had two people pass us all day.

We also saw three of the Giro d’Italia tour buses caught in a bank up of traffic on the autobahn. Hope they got to their cold riders in time. We later learned the Giro route in the area had been changed due to snow at the higher altitudes bringing a freezing point to lower altitudes.

We are staying outside Bolzano up a hill, of course, in a town called San Michele. We turned up from the river path at this point and changed to a different bike path that appears to be an old railway one as we went through three beautiful old tunnels.

Our accomodation is an Air BnB and we are in a room in someone’s house. I did enjoy a nice bath, but she does not have a dryer and given the damp air, our clothes are not drying so we will be putting damp clothes back on.

We borrowed umbrellas and went for a walk and eventually found a nice place to eat in this very German looking town. We forgot to take the camera.

Tony had his ‘usual’ carbonara, and I had a really nice seafood paella.

Tomorrow is one of our big days, with around 2000 metres to climb to get into a more central part of the Dolomites. Rain is forecast but not like today.

There is no breakfast available here either so we will head off early sniffing out food.

We are in the South Tyrol region of Italy which is a German speaking. Signs are predominantly in German now. The border with Austria is not too far away.,

Today’s elevation and map.

Thanks for reading 😊❣️