Not long to go now. We leave on Monday 19th. Training’s gone well. No injuries.
This year’s route (Tour No.9) was inspired by a map given to me in a pub by a fellow hasher ‘Rewind’ (“I found this map and thought of you.”). It showed the Czech Republic and along its southern border (with Austria) was part of The Iron Curtain Trail for cycles. It was colourful map and, for some reason, pricked our interest. (In reading up, there appears to be a, partially complete, cycle track that follows the old East/West border, from The Baltic to The Balkans. It’s designated EV13 or EuroVeloroute 13 - The Iron Curtain Trail, along which are many artefacts and installations remaining from The Cold War period.)
So Vienna (somehow) became the starting point for a tour which will (hopefully) take us north to the Czech border, west along EV13 to Germany then, leaving EV13, south into The Tyrol, through The Dolomites [east to west] and then (optimistically) over the ‘legendary’ Stelvio Pass into Italy. The Stelvio Pass is rather remote and will present various difficulties in getting to it and, moreover, away from it. It’s the second highest paved Alpine pass and involves climbing almost 3,000m in height over 25k. Average gradient 10%. We hope to get there by ‘Stelvio Bike Day’, when the road is closed to motorised vehicles and (on average) some 12,000 cyclists ‘give it a go’. After that, we’ll try to find a town with a train station to begin a rail journey that should (providing Ryanair pilot’s threatened strike threat goes away) see us meet up with Jenny in The Languedoc in the S of France at the beginning of September.
Depending on what route we take, it should be between 900 and 1,000 miles. We’ll find accommodation en route using the Trivago app.