Rest day. Spent it walking in the mountains. Tomorrow looms when, hopefully, we’ll cycle up and over the Stelvio Pass. The summit, at around 9,000’ is about twice that of Ben Nevis and so, I guess, the air will be somewhat thin.

A navigational problem saw us walking in the wrong direction last night. Rather than walking towards town, we were walking away from it. As it was getting dark, we decided to turn back and eat at our hotel. We ended up eating, accompanied by two large Golden Retrievers, under an awning at the front of the hotel - it was a place where locals met to drink and smoke and talk in a Germanic tongue (the region of Italy was annexed from Austria-Hungary after WW1). The ...