Ride Day 4: Ponte di Legno to Trento

This is our longest day.  It starts with some climbing, about 20 km up the Passo del Tonale, the 80 km of all downhill.  That ought to be fun.



The rain continued all night but had slowed a bit by this morning.  But the temperature had continued its downward trend and this morning it was about 6 degrees.  We knew that it would be colder on top of the Tonnale Pass so after a breakfast of bread, cheese and coffee in our AirBnB we bundled up with what we hoped was enough and headed up the climb.  The Tonalle Pass is fairly long and moderately steep, and we just ground it out.  We started at about 0800 but there was actually a fair bit of traffic on the road -- folks heading to the next stage of the Giro.

We made the summit in about 1 1/2 hours and we were cooked and we were a little bit wet but no soaked.  Time for coffee.

Glad to be at the summit

A memorial to a WWII battle

Surrounding mountains

There are tons of ski lifts going everywhere

We stopped for coffee at a little cafe and warmed up a bit.  For the long descent we put on an extra pair of gloves and our down coats under our rain capes -- the temperature was just about 3 degrees and it was going to be cold.  I kept it civilized on the way down.  There were many, many hairpin bends on very narrow roads, but the road surface was new and smooth.

After the first major part of the descent, maybe 20 km down, we started seeing lots of Giro busses.  We knew that today's race started somewhere along this stretch of road but we figured that the race would have started long before we got here.  Not so much.  It turns out that the race hadn't even started and our route was the race route for the next 20 km.  As we passed the start it looked like they were getting ready to go.  The Carabinieri (police) told us we could go, but go "piano" (FAST).  It was all downhill so we were cruising as fast as we could.  We got about 15 km further, being passed by the huge team busses the whole way (they drive by carefully but quickly and we didn't worry about them on the road at all), but then we saw the lead motos and figured we'd better get off to the side.  We jammed on the brakes in a village named Bozzana and about 10 minutes later the race cam by at an awesome pace.

The race route turned north shortly after Bolzanna and we turned south, so we followed the race and headed the opposite direction.  The traffic was really thick because they'd stopped all the cars, but everyone was very courteous to us.

As we reached the valley and followed the river toward Trento a strong tailwind picked up.  We got super lost, but had some vague memory of riding this very path a few years ago.  In any event, it was fast and we were going the right direction, so what is the worst that could happen?

Trento is a busy town but we skirted just to the north of it and headed toward our room for the night, a cool AirBnB place that apparently has a lot of history.

And lots of great roses...

This is our house for tonight

The view toward the Dolomites

We are going to head down the hill to town for some dinner.  Tomorrow is another long day with more climbing, then three days of watching the bike race.

Buono sera.