Livigno

The sun finally came out at Livigno and the past 2 days has been beautiful, the fresh snow on the mountains adds a nice touch, but probably not worth the 3 days of crap weather. I did a cool ride yesterday to check out some of the course for the transalp, it was really good. I even stopped at a mountain refuge (also a dairy) for an awesome lunch of beef stew and polenta, nice.

Today i went out on the road with the intention of climbing the Passo Stelvio (2760m). To get there i rode over the Passo d'Eira (2210m) and the Passo Foscagno (2291m), then descended down to Bormio and the base of the Stelvio. From there it is a total of 37 switchbacks, about 20kms and 1500m vertical to the top. I was pretty happy to see the top and meet up with rosie, who brought me some warm clothes for the ride down. she is a good girl, i shouted her a gelati.

So tomorrow it's good bye Italy, and hello Germany. I am meeting up with MattyZ and we are starting the Transalp on Saturday. Should be a tough one, it's an 8 stage mountain bike race accross the alpes. I might not get to update the blog, but if you are super keen, the race website will have results each day: http://www.bike-transalp.de/