Day 5 - cyclists and angry Italians
Just before we left on this trip, another member advised that the Sella Pass was going to be closed to "fossil fuelled" vehicles on the Wednesday. While we were disappointed, we had plenty of other passes to drive to keep us busy. However, with the pass being closed to 99% of cars and bikes, it just meant that just about every cyclist in Italy was in town!
Today's planned route.....
The Gardena Pass and Sella Pass share the same approach and we had to fight our way through a crowd of cyclists. Seems they had no concept of any road laws, much like most Italian drivers to be honest. Once we got to the point were the road splits, the cars went to the Gardena and the cyclists went to the Sella. From here we did a rough figure of 8 of Passo Gardena / Passo Campolongo / Passo Pordoi / Pass Fedaia / Valparola / Passo Giau. These passes are all very close to each other and we hit Passo Campolongo twice, once in each direction. Be warned though, there were plenty of speed cameras.
Gotta watch out for cattle
This place is spooky in the dark
Passo Giau
It was then a drive to our next hotel, which invloved a lot of 50kph limit roads. Italians don't like to drive at 50kph. However, i don't want any speeding fines, so was sticking to 50kph (GPS confirmed) using cruise control. At one point i had a very angry driver behind me, beeping his horn, flashing his lights and shaking his fist. He was most irate after a few miles of 50kph. But when the limit changed to 100kph and i dropped a gear and mashed my foot into the floor, he was nowhere to be seen! lol
We arrived at the hotel and the car park was rammed and it was very busy. There was a wedding reception with bad karaoke....oh no. But when we were shown our "room" he led us outside and pointed to the little cottage, "you stay here, this is yours!" We only paid for a triple room, but ended up with this lovely cottage type thing.
And then the food was even better. We properly stuffed ourselves here. With starters of goose and pasta, cheese and pasta, and mains of sausage and venison and cold beer.
Fantastic day.
Total driving time (including stops/fuel ups/food/etc) - 9.45 hours / 211 miles