It's fair to say that sleeping rough at an unused ski resort half way up a mountain in the middle of the Alps any time of year is going to be cold. Last night was freezing! It rained all night and as I cocooned myself in my sleeping bag without anything as much as nose poking out I just wanted the sun to come up. I was actually quite warm, had a few layers on and had periods of 1-2 hours sleep every now and then but was dreading the cold clothes to put on in the morning. The last three days I've had to endure cold wet socks with cold wet shoes. I don't wish that on anybody at 8am so I try to sleep on the socks in between my bag and my mat. This doesn't really work and either way the shoes are going to be cold and wet so the best thing for it is to just suck it up and get riding. I ended up having the latest start as it was so cold, I finally peeled the sleeping bag off at half 10. Right, I thought, today was going to be smooth rider day. I'll give the chain an oil, pump up the rear tyre as much as I could and set off with the positive attitude that in 8 hours time I will be looking for a place to camp up again. As I finished pumping up the rear tyre I pulled the pump away and air came gushing out, the pump had got stuck so I pumped it up again but the same thing happened. Getting pretty annoyed now, so I pumped it up again and as I removed the pump the same thing happened. I wiggled the valve slightly and the tube had split just where the valve was. Not exactly the start to this day I was really looking for but i wasn't too disheartened as now I had a double threat on the back wheel. My tyres are panaracer, supposed to be unpunctureable and now they were teaming up with some new "slime" inner tubes that I've been kindly sponsored by, also unpunctureable. If there's any combination you want underneath the weight your about to put on top then it's this combination. I chucked the split inner tube so saved a bit of weight there and I had to unfortunately say goodbye to a couple of water bottles and a t-shirt. The t-shirt was a gift from BSC Old Boys but personally I think I have to many clothes anyway so that had to go. One plastic bottle and one bottle which was a gift from SCORT so sorry guys that's gone aswell. I have a sentimental thing for my current two water bottles as one in particular has been with me since I got Nigel so he's travelled a bit. I pumped up the new tube as much as I could with a little pump and just said to myself, just ride smooth and you'll get there. By riding smoothly I don't just mean avoid the bumps. I mean avoid the stones and bumps, don't traverse, cycle straight and put power through the pedals by keeping the legs straight. Every time I rotate, ensure that one leg flows with the other and make sure I'm not pushing more with my right and don the position of arms in and closer together pulling down on the handlebars and not flicking the bike side to side like you're in a sprint finish with Chris Hoy for the gold medal. This way, you feel your whole body working with the bike all the way down your spine, its like you're one machine! A few cycling tips for you there. So I kept this position all day, through or over however you want to put it, 3 entire mountain passes. I've completely forgotten their names but they ran from Davos to St Maria and have actually taken me into the beautiful land of Italy! As I cycled up the first pass the weather was overcast, I had layers so was feeling good just a little annoyed that I didn't set off till 12! The pass was steep, windy when you turned back on yourself and the light rain the further up you went froze your fingers to the handlebars. I could've complained. Chris Harding a few years ago probably would've complained but then I saw a man doing the same thing as me on a hand bike. He was laying in a fully horizontal position with just his back slightly raised and doing it all with his upper body. As i struggled slowly past him he turned with a big smile on his face, "Salut!" I just thought to myself, WOW! No matter how hard you think things are, no matter how much you could complain there's always someone worse off than you but not only that, showing you how it should be done. What an inspiration that was and with that inspiration, the first pass was smashed. The sun came out for the second pass and I stopped at a garage to pump my tyres up properly. On the roads, the other side of the white lines are basically gutters for all the rainfall. It's very hard to stay on the white line with cars and lorries flashing past you etc so every now and then I ride into the gutter and have to come back out of it. With a heavy load and flattish tyres this is not good and I wince every time I do it. After pumping the tyres up till it said "solid as a rock" on the pressure gauge, Nigel instantly felt like a knew bike and I had a boost of confidence that the Alps will be finished in no time. Thankfully the amount of cars on the roads reduced so I could have a look around at the beautiful scenery for the first time but still focus on the smooth riding aswell. The third pass was a little easier than the first two but I knew I mustn't lose focus. I stopped just before it to take in the views and got speaking to a man called Dom from Basel, who was alone just cycling around on his motorbike. He took a picture of me and will hopefully be following this blog and it will be the first picture of myself and Nigel together, very romantic!
I had planned to stop at the Stelvio pass, a very famous winding road that I just wanted to do to say I did it and because I saw it on Top Gear once. As I got to the turning I spoke to two Germans first who were very knowledgeable of the local routes. They said I had to pay to go through the tunnel towards Livorgno and I had to take a bus as they didn't allow people to cycle through the tunnel. They said that St Maria wasn't far and that was one of my last places to use my precious Swiss francs. They also said that to get to the Stelvio pass its about 1700m straight up with no long flats to help so I thought its best in Nigel's condition that I go towards my next stop of Merano so that meant heading towards St Maria instead. It didn't take long to coast down into St Maria from nearly 2200m and luckily my breaks didn't decide to give up as things could've been very interesting. I spent my last 12.95 swiss francs on 2kg of spaghetti, some soup, 4 sausages and a variety pack of luncheon meats. It came to 13 dead on but I was sure my maths was correct, the lady let me off anyway. About 2 minutes down the road I could see the Italian border, I had done it! I knew I had to be a smooth rider today and like I said not just dodge the rocks, I'm talking Barry White on a water slide eating a galaxy chocolate bar kind of smooth. I was so pleased I did it, I had completely forgotten about the next stage of actually finding a place to stay the night etc.
As I entered Italy a cloud of fear almost instantly hung over me. I was so comfortable in Switzerland with the language and all of a sudden it dawned on me I don't have a clue about Italian! I was sure it wasn't going to be a straight change though, surely there would be a hybrid language in between, I mean we can't just forget our Swiss friends who literally live just a roll away. I was honestly scared, what do I ask the farmers now? How do you say, "do you speak English?" In Italian? How do I even say hello? Arriva derci? Or is that to elaborate? So for the first 10 minutes cycling I went for the universal nod, got a few nods back too so I was happy with that! My first impressions of Italy were pretty poor to be honest. Out of nowhere it was beginning to rain and I had just Bungy corded my socks out to dry so wasn't too happy about that. The roads were terrible, massive cracks straight along the road lengthways meant that focus and smooth riding were back on the cards. Why couldn't they make their roads like they've made their footballing defence for the last, I don't know how many decades! Then to cap it all off as the rain starts to spit painful droplets into my eyes and cars continue to whizz past me, my plastic bottle of water flies out from under the Bungy cord into the road. The two vigilant motorcyclists dodge it with ease as the bottle ends up in the middle of the road and people don't drive or ride In the middle of the road do they? I stopped the bike and as I got off to go and retrieve it from up the hill some clown comes tearing road the corner and goes over it causing it to explode! Cheers Italiano! At least it wasn't my favourite one anyway! I wanted to stop soonish, I had already seen the sign for my next stop tomorrow of Merano and its only 70km so i was very content with my days work. I saw a guy on a rocky road near some fields trimming the grass so I thought I might go over and test the water with what language they actually do speak on the Swiss-Italian border. "Hello?" I said, questioning my own greeting. I did the usual thing in showing him my map to tell him what I was doing and he seemed to understand. He gestured to follow him and he said "here camping site!" I then saw two caravans through the trees, it was actually a camping site that I had picked out but with no signs at all. I didn't want to pay so I used what I think is perfect dialect, "sorry I have niente dinera" he didn't seem to care, the bit where he pointed for me to stay was hardly a "plot" anyway. So ill be up early tomorrow and that'll be that! Hopefully Merano will have the racks I'm looking for but if they don't, I have every faith in my boy Nigel after smashing the Alps today!
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