Day 23 - Pietramurata

Saturday 15th July 2017

There are so many fantastic Strade Provinciale in the Italian Alps. It would take a lifetime to explore them all. The SP79 from Fiera di Primiero to Castelo Tesino is a fine example.

Bikers paradise on the SP79
 You have to be careful in the planning though. I generally reckon on the back roads taking at least twice as long to navigate as those designated 'SS' (Strade Statale or main roads) and four times as long as travelling on the motorways. It is very easy to overestimate the distance you can travel in a day.

But when you choose a good one then the back roads have a beauty that cannot be matched on the main routes. More often than not this depends on the condition of the tarmac. I don't know how they manage it but Italy has better road surfaces on its rural roads than any other part of Europe (excepting Luxembourg).
 
Misty morning

 But first we have to break camp. There is a lot of cloud hovering around the Dolomites peaks when we crawl out of our tents this morning.

Then the sun gets to work and slowly the mist and cloud hovering around the mountain tops starts to burn away as the day heats up.
Finally the skies clear and the jagged peaks surrounding our camp ground appear in all their glory.
Then the sun burns the clouds away

 We only have 100 miles of riding planned for today. But a lot of it is off piste on the lovely back roads of this underpopulated Italian mountain region.
Paying the bill at Camping Castelpietra
We head south on the SS50 for 5 kilometres then turn off the main road onto the SP79. This lovely road will take us over the Torrente Vanoi bridge where the wide river valley carries the alpine melt water south to the bay of Venice.
Now, in July, it is fairly dry but will live up to its name come the spring. 

The Torrente Vanoi bridge
 We wind up the valley from the bridge and climb up towards the Brocon Pass. There are enough tournanti to keep us interested. At the top we arrive at the Albergo Passo Brocon and pull up for a coffee.
With a huge roar we are shortly joined by a mass rideout of the local Triumph Owners Club. Trumpets to the left of us, trumpets to the right. They mill around for a few minutes and then they are off again to terrorise the next peak.

Triumphs at Passo Brocon
Busy day on Passo Brocon
After our coffee we remount and wind down the mountain to Castello Tesino and finally rejoin the SS47 main road which will lead us down to the busy town of Trento.
We are just a few miles north of Lake Garda here, an area we have visited a few times before. On one of those trips, guided by our good mate and Alpine legend Charly Kaller, we discovered the amazing Monte Bondone road. It is used for car hill climbs and the last time I came here it was closed for a festival of lunatics racing highly tuned sports cars up and down the 30+ hairpins. Every curve has a latticework of burnt rubber lines marking their progress. Of course the road surface is absolutely perfect.
Monty Bondone on Monte Bondone
After our last visit Mick earned the nickname of Monty Bondone in tribute to his antics on this gem of a race track road.

So of course we ride up, down and back up again just to check if it is still as good as it was last time.

It's getting late now so after the fun on Monte Bondone we head west again to Camping Daino near the small town of Pietramurata, 1400 metres below.

The view over the Adige valley from Monte Bondone
 Camping Daino is busy but pleasant enough on the grass under the trees. A new GS Adventure arrives at a nearby pitch and we stroll across to introduce ourselves. The rider is Rudi from Wurzberg, a man with magnificent whiskers. We share a few beers and admire all the ingenious Wunderlich accessories that festoon his bike.

Rudi from Wurzberg, man with GS and moustache




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