Everyday on a trip like this can be an adventure if you make it one. Some days you choose the adventure and other days the adventure chooses you. Luckily all of today’s adventures turned out well!
The walk to Intra is about 3km, so we easily walked 8km today if you take into account walking circles around one of the biggest open air markets I’ve ever visited. The market is mostly divided up into two categories: food and what can be best described as junk. Food is pretty self explanatory. We’re in Italy so it’s mostly cheese, olives, salami, bread, cookies, etc. Junk is everything from clothes and shoes mostly made in China to low end kitchenwares. It’s amazing how many people must buy their underwear from the market. I’ve never seen so many cheap underwear vendors in my life. Lots of knock-off items. There was also a stand that sold old stock cycling clothes from Santini, Nalini, Castelli, Colnago, Sportful, etc... kinda like Wheelfine Imports but based out of a van. I didn’t find anything particularly interesting so I’ll save any cycling shopping I do for the area bike shops, of which there are plenty.
When all was said and done, we left the market having spent too much money. I think I was regretting it on the whole walk back, but once I dug into the massive bag of marinated green olives and they were so good, I soon forgot the cash I used to have in my pocket. I can think of no better way to spend money here than on food, and I’d rather spend it on stuff like that than in a restaurant. I have only found one restaurant that I really enjoy here. I’m sure there are others I just have to find them, but except for when Kristen wants some meat or fish, we’d both rather go to the market and find ingredients to cook than spend the money eating at sub-par restaurants.
So that was part one of the day. Part two was the bike ride. Today’s ride was never going to be long. We wanted to go to the market and save energy for a bigger ride tomorrow. When browsing Google Maps a few months ago, I starred a little town called Cicogna at the top of a long twisting road. Little did I know that this road snaked through ValGrande National Park. The road was insane! It was narrow and beautiful at the beginning as we left San Bernardino Verbania with Cossogno in view across the gradually deepening valley. After we passed through Rovegro, another little mountain town, the road got really narrow and really twisty. No switchbacks, just tons of turns at a 3% grade. To give you an idea, this road was so narrow that several times we had to slam on the brakes to stop for a “traffic jam” involving two cars trying to pass each other. I usually involved one of them backing up, which I cannot imagine doing on these crazy roads. Cars are small here but even two Fiat 500s couldn’t pass each other on most of this road.
Things got crazy when a few kilometers later we were faced with a tunnel through the mountain side. It wasn’t long but it wasn’t lit. You could see the other side so it didn’t look like a big deal, but halfway though it got really dark. So dark you couldn’t see yourself, only the light at the other end. Luckily with this being a crazy road to effectively nowhere in a National Park, drivers are moving slowly and carefully. Everyone honks their horns at every turn. The only thing that takes away from the serenity of it is the occasional honk. But, I digress. After the tunnel came a narrow bridge over a gorge that was absolutely incredible! Since there were no cars honking, I could take a minute for a photograph, but photos do it no justice.
After the bridge, the road went up. 9-10% mostly, but I wasn’t really looking at my Garmin. A road this narrow with switchbacks requires full attention. Toward the very top it got steeper and there was a sign warning drivers that from this point on there was no guardrail. As we reached the town we were cheered on by the clanging bells of a very large herd of mountain goats. Our arrival in the tiny town square of Ciconga, we were treated by the sound of two of the town’s men screaming at each other like they were about to start a fist fight. By the time we ate a few biscotti, they were walking and talking together like best friends.
I can’t even begin to imagine what it’s like to live in a town like this so isolated and with so few people. Everyone must practically be related. This is the type of place that you probably don’t leave during winter. The existence of these people more closely resembles survival than living with any other purpose.
The ride down was not as bad as I thought it would be, but not exactly fun either. We really took it slow. There was not a choice really. Between the narrow blind turns and the sheer drop off into the ValGrande, there was no room for errors. I love descending, but today’s route had little to do with pushing limits of cycling skill, it was more about not falling off the face of the earth. Today’s ride really wasn’t even great training, but it was absolutely an adventure.
The final adventure of the day was doing the laundry. Such a mundane task usually wouldn’t get a mention, but as it happens, things don’t always go as planned on a trip like this. The lavanderia (laundromat) that I knew to be around the corner from our apartment seems to be closed indefinitely. It looks to be moving, but of course that won’t happen in August. The owner is probably on vacation. Luckily we were able to find another one but that one was located about 3/4 of the way to Intra (remember that 3km walk from earlier in the day?). There was no way we were going to go there before dinner, so we decided to risk it, make dinner and then go over there by bike to see if it was open. It’s amazing these bicycle contraptions; they’re so much faster than walking!
We loaded up our backpacks with the clothing that took priority- cycling clothes- put on the lights and rode over there in no time. Luckily they were open! We were able to put the clothes in and while they were washing, take a spin down the bike lane to the lake. This is absolutely how we’re doing laundry for now on. It hopefully won’t be an adventure next time, but tonight it was. It was actually very fun riding through the quiet streets of Verbania with the street lights on.
Tomorrow we plan to head up Mottarone, one of the highest mountains around. It should be a challenging ride with a climb up to the top, a descent down to Lago d’Orta, a climb back over the lower slopes, and a pass through the famous resort town of Stresa on the way back to Verbania. I’m excited about it. They’ll be much easier roads to navigate as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment