133.09 km, 2,993 m
Today’s sufferfest menu contains three climbs: The Passo Duron, Passo del Cason di Lanza and Passo di Pramollo. To dress it up, we’re serving this menu with lashings of rain. Yum.
Grant, Craig, Sarah, Richard and I head N from the hotel and out into the deluge. The back wheels pick up the wet and shoot it into our chamoised derrieres. Everyone’s soaked in minutes.
A lovely 1000m leg-loosener, the Passo Duron builds as we head N to Paluzza, then E through the hairpins of Ligosullo. The black tarmac has become a mollusc lido, and a peloton of slugs (front crawl, obvs) pass us (maybe). Further on, as the road cuts through a beautiful meadow, the road becomes scattered with <3mm white pebbles. They are not pebbels, they are baby snails and it is kiddie swim time in the lido! My wheels make the kinda noise a spoon makes when it hits a crème brulee.
No one is stopping at the summit. I grab a quick photo with Mark.
A short, sharp descent to Paularo, wet disc brakes squealing like a banshee, Craig and I drip into a café. Again, a dearth of cake. Just three, bored-looking croissants. I do my best Italian-Franglaise to order a café longue/Americano and an Americano with milk. Cheerfully served a thimble espresso, I realise I’ve immediately finished it, so instead, we sit for a few mins, trying not to sway to the (bad) Mexican music. As we leave, we pick up John, Brandon, Julian, Iggy (and others?), and start winding up the Passo del Cason di Lanza, predictably losing them ahead of us on the ascent. The rain stops, and the sun peeks out.
I catch them on the decent, and lead into Pontebba, again no cake (!!!), instead immediately twisting back N through the hairpins of the Passo di Pramollo/Nassfeld Pass and over the border into Austria. Not even a sniff of a patisserie stop on the summit, and I descend, with serious tummie rumbles, into the Austrian town of Tröpolach . Unfortunately, the van is nowhere in sight, so we are unable to don our lederhosen bib shorts, but at the restaurant, we spend some time happily pronouncing words like schnitzel (we know the Austrians love jokes because they live in hill-areas places (not sorry).
The remaining 60km are mercifully flat. In a ten-bike peloton (Ju, John, Brandon, Si, Iggy, Mike, Steve, Steve and Grant(?)), we race alongside the river Gail E’ish, speeding through the pretty Austrian towns and villages (Watschig, Moderndorf, Nampoach, Vorderberg, Notsch im Gailtal) to the front of the (first-prize in the Boxy-est competition) Hotel Seven in Villach.
As far as I know, only one faller today; John took a slide on a wet cornered descent of the Passo Duron (probably some slug slime). Just a bruised palm; he should be ok for his July Men’s Health cover shoot. UPdate, a second faller: Sarah’s wheel caught a drain cover: another elbow planed.
Liz wibbling#2 Manadvice
It seems there is never a shortage of males willing to generously offer free advice to the unsuspecting female cyclist (although to be fair – the lads on this trip have been total stars – not an ounce of patronising).
Here’s a few from my collection:
1. How to wash my bicycle: “you wanna start with a bucket of soapy water…”. ( I spend more time cleaning my bike than my lovely husband spends watching football. Exactly).
2. How to cycle faster: “Get on the drops!”. This gem was delivered as I was smoothly rotating to the front of the peloton. The advice was not proffered to the male cyclists splintering out the back …
3. Pick of the litter this one: “You must have a very good husband to let you out cycling so much…” Oh to have a husband that lets me roam free! The insinuation that a husband is risking promiscuity in his wife and will lose her if he doesn’t tighten the leash.
4. A demo on how to do lunges…(cue humorous physical demo).
5. Half way up an alpine ascent I’ve been advised that I need to “go at my own pace” and “take it steady” Guess there would have been more advice forthcoming, but sadly they dropped back…