25/7 Monday

Whatever happened, this was going to be a long day in the saddle, as it involved Italian 'Nationales' and lots of small, mountain roads.The main road through Sondrio to the start of the Via Stelvio was very busy, so progress was slow. The Stelvio Pass itself was really spectular and exceeded our expectations. On the way up, we noticed the Gavia Pass going off to the right, which one of the old Italian bikers, at the hotel, hadb said was his favourite road. It was nice to do the Stelvio in dry weather although it was very cold around the summit, with lots of snow around. The descent was really good fun, although we did get overtaken by two English guys on ZZR 1400s who were really going for it. We were heading for the Grossglocknerstrasse, in the Hohe Tauern Austria, which was the third of our four target passes for this year's tour. En route, howrever, having cocked-up around Bolzano, we accidently found two additional passes which we felt matched the Stelvio and bettered the Splugenpass. These were the Passo di Sella and the Passo di Campolongo, between Bolzano and Cortina d'Ampezzo. Nearly the whole ride from Cortina to Lienz was on good, twisty roads, as was the remaining route to the Grossglocknerstrasse pay-station. We had dropped a bollock, though, as we had thought our hotel - the Wasserfall in Fusch an der Grossglocknerstrasse - would have been within the toll section of the road, but we were to discover that it wasn't.Once you've paid your toll, you can ride between the toll stations all day, if you wish.Unfortunately, the hotel was north of the pay-to-ride section, so we bought our tickets at about 20.00 and only got to ride the Grossglockner once, from South to North, and ended up riding in the dark.As we ascended, it got very cold with a bitter wind. We took a couple of photos of some nearby snow-clad peaks, little realising that, as we reached the higher points of the road, we would find the mountain covered in quite fresh snow. The ploughed banks having begun to melt earlier in the day, the road surface was covered in water, in many places, with temperatures now around freezing. As dusk turned to night, this made our ride demanding.

During our descent, we caught up with two Swedish bikes which later turned up at our hotel. The guys, riding a ZX12 and a Blackbird, were on their first big tour. They'd ridden up from Vienna, that day, and they were on there way to the Czech Republic.

The last rays of sun on one of the peaks.