A holiday in three parts.

Part 1 – bicycles, men in Lycra, good company, interesting debates and LOTS of good food and wine – after all, cycling is all about eating enough to keep your legs going round (or so a friend once told me).

Alistair left first. An early morning drive on Sunday to deliver him to Venice Airport. Having extended his leave pass from his wife and two daughters, adding some ‘father-son bonding’ time with Don to what was originally a business trip to a cycling trade show, he was probably stretching it to even stay with us as long as he did. The young one of the group – a mere babe in his forties – he added a sense on wonder at just to how these two old blokes (his dad Don and mate Gary), both in their mid 70s, could even climb these high mountains, sometimes even beating him to the top.

I really enjoyed watching his admiration of his dad, tempering the ever present frustration with some of Don’s annoying foibles…

That need to constantly revisit his obsession with investing in gold to hedge against world economic collapse, that drives Peter crazy, and the difficulty both Don and Gary have with “technology” – though we should all admire their willingness to persevere with iPads and cellphones, nevertheless.

Having travelled with Don before, I know only too well his fearless disregard for road rules. Many’s the time the group would return with hair-raising tales of Don shooting red lights or hanging over onto the “other” side of the road on the bends.

Don was next to go – his Wellington lady friend awaiting his arrival in Bolzano for dinner on Tuesday. We drove him through to Dobbiaco and literally PUT him on the train, juggling his bicycle bag, a large suitcase (Annemarie said he needed lots of posh clothes) and a backpack! No ticket, but there was nowhere on the station to buy one – suggested he find a ticket seller on the train! Presumably he got there…

Bonus discovery… A latteria (dairy, where they actually make the cheese!) in Dobbiaco!  Peter and I stopped in for a wee tasting – of course – accompanied by glasses of milk, and a very salty buttermilk that Peter loved so much he had a second glass.  Note the bus tour in the background – a day trip from a local retirement village perhaps?  I can tell you that 50 old deaf people all yelling at each other in German made for a conversation-free zone!

And then there is Gary. The wise old man of cycling, and what a genuine all round nice guy. I did smile at his deep frustration with Peter. Peter could be really great, you know – he has that latent talent and strength, just needs to train properly. Gary is just so keen to coach him… World age group champs beckon. But Peter is unmoving – doesn’t need to prove anything, he says. Gary sighs… the wasted talent causing him almost physical pain.

The thing I enjoyed most about Gary is how much he clearly relishes every single day. Whether it’s a good ride, a fabulous meal, wonderful scenery, his glass is ever not just half full, but full full. He reminds me of my great Uncle Jan, who having survived being a prisoner of war, seemed to count every extra day as a bonus. I did wonder whether Gary had some similar escape in his past.

A mix up in all our dates meant that Gary needed to be in Venice the day before us to catch his plane home…. Another 2 hour drive to Venice! By now, we were getting to know the road really well…. And then there were two!

So together the five of us shared nearly two weeks together – we solved the world’s problems (not really, but we did thrash them out a lot), bemoaned deeply the state of NZ politics, becoming ever more bizarre by the day, and shared life stories. Don’t ever say that men don’t talk about the stuff that matters… maybe it’s something about cycling that generates sharing, but this is genuine friendship in action, and spanning several generations.

It was good.

And so on to part 2. The in-between bit between the cycling and the gorillas. Rob and Jenna join us tonight in Venice for a weekend of rugby (on TV), classical music (in real life) and relaxing catchup. Then it’s on to Modena for what I hope will be the culinary highlight of the trip – Osteria Francescana – currently number 3 on the world’s best restaurants list, with just 11 tables! Can’t wait!

Dogs are big, here in Italy… I don’t mean big as in size, although there are some pretty huge ones… Just big as in trendy, everyone seems to have one (or more)!
Unsurprising then that I’ve seen about six of these for every one actual rubbish bin – clearly you can take your litter home with you, but doggy doos need to be dealt with on the spot. Handy bag dispenser too.

I still haven’t succumbed to the urge to shop – in large part because I have discovered that my body clock apparently has a preferred shopping time around lunchtime and mid afternoon… Which is exactly when the shops in this part of the world close for an extended lunch break from noon (or 12.30 if you’re lucky) until 3 or 4pm. So plenty of window shopping, but no actual buying.

I am however wondering if Isabel and Matthew need some Alpine outfits… Maybe some lederhosen for the little man?

And yes, normal people do actually wear this stuff around here! Mind you, to be fair, I didn’t personally check how “normal” this guy actually is…

However, judging from the lack of reaction of the thronging shoppers, it is apparently perfectly normal for the bride to be (I assume she is a bride to be) to be wandering around the shopping precinct in the middle of the day with a big pink penis on her head…

And finally on the subject of weddings, this parked in the local church car park, where the arriving friends and family were almost all dressed in very fancy long evening gowns for a midday wedding… A long long wedding celebration coming up perhaps, but how the hell was the bride going to get her dress into this?

Cycling, apparently, is contagious.

After just over a week with my quartet of men in lycra, it took surprisingly little effort on Peter’s part to persuade me that I would see a lot more from a bike than on foot. So walking plans went out the window as I saddled up on one of the hotel mountain bikes and took to the disused rail trail that runs up into the hills above Cortina.

Actually, I discovered later that it runs all the way to Dobbiaco to the north of us, but 29km was a tad too ambitious for me. In fact, just a few km in, I was seriously missing the “lady saddle” I have on my bike back home… And today I have bruises to show that a “racing saddle” on a mountain bike is definitely not for me.

The scenery was indeed spectacular, and of course I did get a lot further up the path than I would have walked!

The trail is full of history, interspersed with myths and legends. This hole in the rock up above is said the be the hole through which the devil escaped the valley when Christianity arrived!

But more recently, and certainly more factually, this is the area of the shifting frontier between the Italian and Austrian forces in WW1. A lot of 100 year memorials going on around the towns and villages too. The hiking map I’m using has all the frontiers marked out in coloured barbed wire! On my ride, there’s a bridge… One of those relocatable feats of engineering – I heard Sid in my ear saying “we call it a Bailey bridge”. Unfortunately very well ‘protected’ from stupid tourists who might be tempted to throw something (or themselves) down down into the gorge below, so what would have been spectacular photographs remain uncaptured.

I crept tentatively down the side, off the path, to get this one…

Along with the story of how it was destroyed by the retreating Italians only to be rebuilt by the advancing Austrians! There must be easier terrains than this on which to wage a war!

“Only a few hours of careful work”!!

And while we are on the subject of engineering, it would not be Italy if there wasn’t a tunnel along the way, preferably more than one. The highways and byways of Northern Italy are comprehensively punctuated with tunnels of all shapes and varieties, well constructed and lit (or not). Clearly in Italy road builders live by the old bear hunt mantra… Can’t go over it, won’t go round it, must go THROUGH! And even on this lowly cycling / walking trail, at least a couple of tunnels for good measure!

Inside, wet and cold and eerily silent. And scarey! Even the lights in this one didn’t in any way mean you could see the roadway. You just cycle along, hoping like hell you’re not heading for a major pothole or crevasse!

And the next one even darker – unlit presumably because it’s shorter so you can almost see one end from the other (if you could see around bends of course!

But outside the world remains beautiful! If was only when I turned for ‘home’ at around the 8km mark – my butt being simply too sore to continue – that I realised I’d been riding relentlessly uphill for all that time. Great gearing on this bike! The whizz downhill, and the fantastic vista before me, tempted me to continue flying down the hill all the way into the village (another 2km), where I settled into a comfy outdoor chair for a bit of refreshment. Coffee with a view!

All in all, a very worthwhile 20km – a drop in the bucket compared to the 100km plus days the boys have been riding, but satisfying nevertheless. Today, I’m back to walking – fewer views, but easier on the body!

Just when I think I can’t possibly take another photo of the scenery, it serves up something like this – sunrise from our bedroom balcony! This is the pinky pinkness of the Dolomites…

The man in the information centre was right. There really isn’t anything much to do here, apart from walk, hike, ride and climb – but if you’re not into the hiking, tiding or climbing, it makes for a pretty relaxing, and inspiring, break from the real world.

Three days of traversing the Dolomites has quite literally left me speechless.

Day 1 Bormio to Lana The road down from the top of Stelvio. Peter drove over the pass and then joined the cyclists for a leisurely 70km along the bike paths through the apple orchards (more about apples later). I got quite lost – really need to update the Navman – not helped by the fact that here in the South Tirol, roads (and everything else have a split personality, Italian one day, German the next!

The man in the hotel in Lana, when asked if he needed the details of the car I’d left in his car park, pulled up his nose and said “no, I saw it, it’s the Italian one”. I was left wondering how on earth a Skoda station wagon is “Italian” until I realised most of the others in the car park had German number plates! He expanded on his views when Peter checked in a couple of hours later… This area, the Italian “just TOOK it, just like that” snaps his fingers… “Just like Putin just TOOK Crimea, they just took it”. Okay then. Anyway, I’m much more comfortable in my broken German than in broken Italian.

Meals that night were outrageously gigantic in the restaurant / pub down the road. Apparently wine is a foreign concept… All menu items came with a beer match suggestion, but we had a choice of only 2 types of red wine – we sampled both and were sad to have left Nebbiolo country behind us (but fortunately a few bottled stashed back in the room for emergencies).

Day 2 From Lana to Selve di Val Gardena (full name specially for you, Willy Sussman) I was on driving duty. For the cyclists, a long slow ride through the valleys and then up up up into what is a ski resort (where I’d managed to find a hotel that was so far up the ski slopes that there was a somewhat unnecessary climb at the end of the ride. Rewarded by this view from the hotel room window of the glorious pink Dolomites.

With the day pretty much to myself, I unpacked ALL of the luggage into our room, set up a little birthday surprise for Don…

…and then headed down into the town for a leisurely lunch with a view. Have to say, the cheese balls weren’t at all what I expected – should have picked the gnocchi!

Have to say I had a wee chuckle at this sculpture – make me think of Matthew!

The restaurant across the road from from our lodgings was the perfect place to celebrate Don’s 76th birthday, which we did with style. For me smoked duck prosciutto (rivalling my other new culinary discovery – swordfish carpaccio, from the hotel in Bormio), followed by gnocchi with Gorgonzola… I didn’t join the boys in dessert (though the warm fresh raspberries with ice cream smelled scrumptious). Best of all, the perfect waiter… One of those wonderful Europeans for whom serving in a restaurant is a career, and one he is very very good at. Great wine and food advice, just enough banter but not too much, indulging our bad German and Italian before gently revealing that actually his English is pretty good, humouring Don’s sometimes unconnected questions or remarks… All in al, a great night out.

Day 4: Gardena to Cortina. Maybe it was the big dinner, or the altitude, or the biggish ride the previous day. Having waved the cyclists goodbye – all four of them – I was no sooner round the first of what was to be an unexpectedly large number of hairpin bends than I was waved down by a forlorn Peter sheltering under a sign at the side of the road. Seems the lungs are still not quite up to riding 3 days in a row.

Plus was that I got to sit ogling the scenery from the passenger seat, while he drove (with regular stops to allow the others to don their warm gear for the downhills, and shed it again for the next climb.

I think this last pic is one of my best scenic photos ever!

A very weary bunch of riders arrived in Cortina mid afternoon, and by 5.30pm we were desperately seeking dinner – not an easy ask in a town where at that time mostly all that is on offer is cakes, ice cream and beer! A small, quite basic and very expensive pizzeria rescued us from a rush of low blood sugar grumpiness… And by 730pm all were back in their rooms (Alistair having decided he was no longer sharing with Don) and some, I believe snoring soundly by 8!

So finally, back to the apples, and back to the very first day of our journey. From the moment we left Lake Como, and all the way through the Gardena, the valleys are awash with the yellow and red of fresh ripe apples waiting to be harvested. The volumes are overwhelming… One packhouse we passed was as large as a small village! I could not help but wonder at the fact that New Zealand actually exports apples to Europe, and quite successfully so. Yes, we fill their “off season” – but unless you’re an apple aficionado, you will probably be quite happy with the local ones kept in cool stores for a year round supply. The importance of our pip fruit innovation programme… Constantly developing new varieties to meet and to generate new tastes – it’s absolutely critical. I was again pleased to have played a small part, through one of my best research projects ever, in helping to shape the development priorities for that programme.

Because honestly, beautiful as they look, these apples are, to eat, not a patch on our fantastic Pacific Rose, Lemonade, Jazz and other varieties, not to mention my very favourite bite sized Rocket apples!

So here I am in Cortina for the next six days. A town completely dedicated to VERY fit and active pursuits. If you’re not here to ride (road or mountain bikes), hike or rock climb, the man in the information centre is pretty much at a loss as to what to suggest. Fortunately I am perfectly happy to wander, with my book, my note pad and my knitting; and of course my shiny new camera that I am getting to know a little better each day.