14/08/2019 – Stelvio x2

The weather cleared up and I packed up my tent and made a good start. The first stop was Locarno where I had an extended break gazing out onto the lake where I was met with some familiar faces…

Feeling a bit tired I decided to make it a short day and headed slightly further up the valley to the next town and set up for the night ready for a big day tomorrow.

I had the San Bernardino pass and the Splügen pass on the agenda today so fuelled up well for it. Knowing that Wales were playing England I had planned on a lengthy lunchtime stop.

The cycling was immense. Spending hours slaving up the mountains was rewarded with incredible speeds going down the other sides. Sadly the weather wasn’t on my side (nor was the rugby result) and the views at the top weren’t exactly scenic with dense cloud at the top of both climbs…

Nevertheless, I made good progress and made the town of Chiavenna and made a beeline to the takeaway pizza shop. I ploughed through 3 pizzas and was soon on my way to the campsite.

What followed was an awful thunderstorm, the flashes of lightening and booms of thunder keeping me up until the early hours of the morning. Dealing with the soaking wet tent in the morning wasn’t ideal either.

Going back into Switzerland en route to St Moritz there was a queue. This was strange as I hadn’t encountered a queue at a border before on this trip. When I made it to the front I was told the road I needed was shut due to an avalanche which occurred during the thunderstorm.

Not knowing what to do, I headed for the nearest cafe. After looking at a map, I found another way round to Bormio (the base of Stelvio) and was on my way. It was a very flat day so made good progress only hampered by rain in the evening.

Not being able to face another sleepless night in a thunderstorm I found a B&B online and booked it straight away. It seems that in this part of Italy, no one speaks English. So far on this trip my basic French and German has been able to get me out of most situations but I didn’t know more than 5 words in Italian.

With basic sign language (due to lack of 4G and WiFi at this place so no google translate) I managed to check in and get my bike to a locked part of the house. The room was strange. The walls were covered in paintings of Disney characters from the 90’s (think Pocahontas and the Lion King).

The next day, after a quick call to my mum for her birthday, I was aiming for Bormio and then Stelvio. Bormio came soon enough and fuelled up with pizza and pasta for lunch, I set off in pursuit of Stelvio. Often called one of the best driving/cycling roads on the world, I couldn’t wait.

Once again, the weatherman wasn’t kind to me and I was cycling through cloud not too long after starting. With the summit being at over 2700m, I had a long way to go.

The climbing was tough and the temperature was dropping. Not being able to see more than 20m in front of me I didn’t get a chance to take in the scenery so it was a case of headphones in, head down and 80’s playlist on. After 2 and a half hours, I made it.

The temperature had dropped to 3 degrees and the rain had started again. The campsite I was planning to stay at was 3/4 of the way down the other side so I had to just get on with it. Fortunately a nice motorcyclist let me follow him down with his hazards on so that I could see where the corners were and possibly more importantly, be seen.

My fingers were frozen and core was shivering but after doing the world record for putting up my tent, I was in my sleeping bag fast asleep.

Not all was lost. My plan had worked out well. I wanted to go up/down both sides of Stelvio so in the morning sun, I finished off the ride down to the other start point, turned around and went back up again.

The weather was far better with a bright blue sky ahead of me, this was clearly a great decision.

5 minutes in I’d changed my mind. This was a bad decision.

As there were no shops around, I hadn’t eaten anywhere near enough to recover from the previous day, let alone fuel me up for this trip up. It was a serious struggle and being overtaken by every man and his dog didn’t help either.

3 hours later I’d made it. The view was (thankfully) much better this time round.

The descent was just as good. I can see why this road is raved about so much.

The first stop back in Bormio was the shop. Grabbing whatever looked good and shoving it in the basket took a few seconds. I practically ran out of the shop the the park bench 10m away and the bag of crisps was empty faster than I care to admit.

I’m so glad that I did it the second time, even though I was probably one of the slowest people to ever cycle up it, it was worth every second.

I guess the harder it it going up the hill, the more you enjoy going down. There’s probably a life lesson somewhere in that…