Dolomites

Mum and Dad jetted into town on Wednesday afternoon. Thursday and Friday were spent showing them around a rainy Milan and its coffee shops. Then on Friday afternoon we headed up to the Dolomites. Kath and I had cycle toured though this region two years earlier and were keen to get back for a second visit. The autostradi were busy but we made good time and pulled into our apartment in Val Gardena about 6:30pm. It was raining hard up in the mountains as well and we ran through the cold rain to get some dinner in town.

Miraculously Saturday dawned clear with magnificent views from the house. I had chosen an apartment in a private home on the internet and we were lucky enough to get flat in great house in the pastures above the village. Dad, Kath and I contoured around from the house to the Val Lungha. While Mum checked out the town we walked up through beautiful autumnal forest. At the head of the valley one fork petered out into a snowy gully. The other continued a little further and we ate our lunch in a grassy meadow surrounded by snow dusted peaks. We then dropped back through the valley into town and finished off with the steep climb back up to the house.

The lady who owned the house promised us that the weather would be even better on Sunday and we got another blue-sky day. We all went for a short walk to a refugio half and hour above the house. It had great views back down into our valley as well as a sweeping view up into the Alp Cisles region. It looks to be an excellent ski area – hopefully we can make it back up to this area in the winter.

We dropped back to the house and packed up. We stopped in town for a coffee and then started the climb up out of town to do a loop of the Sella Massif. This was about a 60km drive and took us over three passes around the massif until Canazei. The views were great as we crossed the snowy passes and then dropped down through forests into the villages in each valley. We headed directly home from Canazei but we could have done a fourth pass and got back to Val Gardena. This is the route of the famous Sella Ronda ski route – 28km of downhill ski runs linked by lifts that complete a 6 hour circuit around the Sella Massif – another on the list for winter!