Fusch (Grossglockner)

What a great day! It was entirely centred around the Grosshlockner Alpine road, which I spent the majority of the day struggling to get up and the remains as the Sun was getting low zooming down the other side.

Gailberg

When I was doing the planning for this holiday I sketched the route on maps that I had. I looked for roads that took me over passes, the higher the better. Today's stretch looked to be an intermediate day, at the end of the grand Italian Alps I didn't look too closely at clues that would have suggested that it would be a bit more difficult than that.

Paularo

The great Dolomite climbs were now over. The last one didn't break the forest cover and the ones coming up, at least within Italy were all lower. Though as I was to find later in the day, this didn't make them easy.

As I dropped down I began wishing that I'd finished rather than started the tour with the climbs of the previous two days. With a famous cyclosportif taking them all every July I think I have an excuse to come back.

Passo di Tre Croci

The weather was perfect this morning. The thunder and rain of last night had come and gone leaving hardly a cloud behind. What was an inability to continue last night in the morning was endowed the virtue of precience. I would have felt an idiot to be sitting at the bottom of the pass missing the view.

Passo Pordoi

I cycled over all the passes of the Sella ring; Passo di Sella, Passo di Gardena, Passo di Campolongo and Passo Pordoi. I am so beat! I cracked half way through the last climb and needed to take 30 minutes out to digest some glucose and convince myself not to give up and drop down to Arraba. I'm glad that I did.

Alpi di Siusi

Finally all the preparation is getting close to be worthwhile. The contents of small piles of equipment and clothes that I'd making, creating shortlists, began to stabilise. Was such and such a thing really necessary? Two or three changes of cycling clothing? Bib shorts or normal ones?