Oh, glorious Stelvio Pass - how we missed you

Day 3 of the ride to Croatia was always going to be a long day.

Ian and I decided we needed to leave early, so the plan was to start riding at 07:00 and there we both were, packing gear on the bikes at 06:45. The ride into Turin on the previous late afternoon / evening was very busy as we had hit the evening rush hour and it seemed just about everyone in this part of Italy was on the road at the same time us the two of us. The traffic was very bad and the bikes had been overheating.  We checked oil levels and all appeared fine, so we set off in the warmth of a Turin morning sun.

As we rode through the city, we spotted something that looked familiar. Knowing that the (original) Italian Job film had been shot in Turin, we saw this river next to a bridge. If you have seen the film, you will remember the three get-away mini’s being successfully driven across a shallow river in front of a bridge, and the Italian police cars getting caught in the flow of the river. Is this that shallow river and bridge? No doubt somebody who reads this blog will know....

The first part of the ride was a quick blast of about 60 miles from Turin to Milan, all on motorway. As we neared Milan, the traffic trying to get into the city was very heavy and we were caught in bad traffic delays, but by riding between the cars, we soon worked our way through the mad Italians, all trying their hardest to get to work seconds before the person in the car next to them. Is it something in the Italian genes that distinguish Italians as fast drivers? Maybe they all have heavy right feet?

Soon we left the harsh motorway environment and headed north, along the eastern shore of the stunningly beautiful Lake Como. There are two roads here that run (almost) parallel – a fast road in tunnels and a much slower and older road that hugs the line of the lake edge. Ian and I took the slower road. It would have been very tempting to stop every mile or so to take pictures, but we resisted and rationed ourselves to just a few places....

At one of these photo stops, I saw this archway....

We then suffered a 100 miles or so of perhaps the most boring road I have ever been on. It was narrow, just one lane in either direction, slow and with almost no overtaking opportunities (although some of the Italian drivers can, and do, overtake with cars coming straight at them). We were cheered along this road however by the anticipation that was building inside us, as we were nearing what is said to be one of the best, if not THE best driving / riding road in the world. Stelvio Pass is a winding, twisting road with long sweeping bends and a number of tight hairpin bends as well, all set in glorious scenery. Viewers of the car programme “Top Gear” may remember the team drove this road a couple of years ago (Chris L will certainly remember). Set high in the Alps, the road is a must-do for any petrol-head and in planning the route through Italy, this was the one road that we just had to do.

We got to the start of the road, ready to test our riding skills on this road of roads, to find the pass..... SHUT.

Shit, we had travelled well out of our way just to ride this road and in truth, had probably added a whole day to our route just to ride this road.

I couldn’t believe it. So, resigned to the fact that we would not be able to ride it, we studied the map and realise we would need to detour about 70 miles to get onto the road we needed to get onto. The new road was still a major mountain pass, but it certainly wasn’t up to Stelvio standards. I was so gutted, I could hardly bring myself to get my camera out on the alternative pass, but I did and here are a few pictures....

After a while, we realised that our detour was so long, we had made it back into Switzerland, we had gone that far north. We did ride along a lake that was amazing to look at. Lake Livigno is formed by a huge dam and consequently the lake is very deep and stretches back a long way into the mountains. By September the lake is full, but over the winter, it is used to create hydro electricity by releasing the water through the turbines. When we rode along the lake, it was completely empty at one end – with just bleached white rocks showing across its entire width. From the dam, the lake looked like this....

The water from the spring snow melt in the mountains is enough to completely fill the lake. The dam is impressive as well. Note Ian and the two bikes on the top right of the picture, which gives a sense of scale....

When leaving the dam, we rode through the very narrow Munt la Schera tunnel, which is about two miles long with just a single lane, used in each direction alternately. The noise of two Harleys being ridden through the small tunnel sounded fantastic, but there was a problem. Coming out of the end of the tunnel, we were stopped by the Swiss police (the border is right there) who questioned me about the exhaust pipes on the Leading Ladies. It seemed we may have fallen foul of the tough Swiss environmental laws, but when we said we were not staying in Switzerland but returning to Italy straight away, they let us go. It seems it may have been a different outcome if we had said we were continuing on through Switzerland!

Still in the mountains, we made our way to our hotel for the night, in Bolzano. On the way, I took a couple of on-the-move pictures of Ian, riding in front of me. At one stage, we caught up with another small group of H-D’s from Holland, who were almost certainly on their way to Croatia as well....

Just as we pulled up at the hotel in Bolzano, it started to rain. It was cool and refreshing and it felt great after such a long days riding, of 333 miles – quite a feat on these roads!