Wednesday, September 23, 2009—Roncade, Italy

The main road south from Belluno is a busy one, so the route I chose was the route plotted by my TomTom gps. My experience with the TomTom, which has an option titled Bicycle Route, has been a very positive one. Once, in Germany, it led us onto a dirt road that got smaller and smaller until it became nothing but a farmer’s field, and the same day it could not find a paved route between two towns, but besides this one time it’s plan has been excellent. It avoids highly traveled roads yet goes in a relatively straight line, making the route a bit longer than the busy roads but much more interesting and cycle-friendly. And it always lets you know exactly where you are. In short, you should have a decent map with you, but a gps adds security and ease of planning which is very valuable.

The route we followed went through farming country for some time, then turned towards a ridge which we had to cross. The road up the ridge was a climb, but picturesque and noable. But once we reached the top, the Passo di S.Boldo, the other side was unlike any I have ever experienced. It began with a warning that no vehicle over 3 meters in height would be allowed to pass. The next sign indicated that 18 switchbacks were ahead. Then there was a stop light. All of this made me wonder what lay ahead. And what came was a one lane road going through a series of tunnels and switchbacks, descending a vertical mountain face to a valley below. It was as if the road builders had built a road up a canyon and found that it ended up facing a dead-end in the form of a mountain. So they decided to just climb the mountain with the road—which is what they did. An amazing engineering feat, and a most interesting road to ride down.

From the bottom of that pass to where we have stopped for the night, just 12 miles from the Venice airport, the route mirrored the increasingly populated area we were entering. The roads became more crowded until we changed our route to avoid what we had assumed would be our destination, Treviso, and instead had the TomTom guide us towards the airport on a Bicycle Route that bypassed that city. From where we are the ending point of our nearly 1200 mile trip is only about an hour away, so we may not ride at all tomorrow. What we may do is make a sojourn into Treviso to look around, and we will certainly spend most of either tomorrow or Friday in Venice. Hamburg to Venice, 2009, is just about history.