Tuesday, 1st August.
So one holiday ends and another begins - though this one will be rather more demanding than plodding over and around the beautiful island of Monte Isola (plonked in the middle of Lago d'Iseo, in the Italian Lakes between Como and Garda) for the past week. Apart from the greater physical challenge, another difference will be wearing leather boots instead of trainers and carrying a pack instead of a phone, sunglasses and a hat. Hopefully these will be offset to a degree by slightly cooler than roasting temperatures in the mountains.
After waving Jen, Liz and Gill off in their transfer taxi to Milan airport, I set about getting to the start of the walk. Seeing as we'd being staying close to the Alps for the previous week, I'd made a pretty good job of planning a walk absolutely nowhere near the Italian Lakes. In fact the plan was to make my way towards the Maritime Alps and head in the general direction of the Mediterranean Sea for 9 days. Getting to the trailhead involved a boat, 3 trains and 2 buses, meaning I'd get there much later than the others would get back to North Wales.
The boat was a 5 minute jaunt from Monte Isola to the mainland, followed by a short stroll to the station. The waiting room had a bookcase of reading material to pass the time with (I looked at the pictures), and a small selection VHS video cassettes for anyone who happened to have a player with them.
Nigel Mansell VHS anyone?
A 'super economy' journey took me to Brescia, where security seemed to be on high alert, so I was grateful to board the (much larger) train to Torino. I found myself in 'premium' class, probably by mistake, where I was privileged to be offered a refreshment pack which included a wet wipe and a fruit pastille, both individually wrapped!
Scary Brescia railway station!
Refreshment pack.
Soon after leaving Brescia I noticed that we were travelling at quite some speed. Now I don't use British trains much so the fastest could be comparable, but I was pretty surprised to see on the screen that we were moving at 299kph (185.79mph). I suspect the speed limit is 300!
From Torino the third train (back in 'super economy') took me to Cuneo, within sight of the Alps once again, and the first bus to Dronero nearer still. After a lengthy wait my last trip of the day took me finally into the mountains and to the tiny village of Macra. The 30 minute journey was a classic, on one of those mountain roads from the Bond films. We went up and up a narrow, deep valley in a far-too-large coach with cars scattering in our wake, which I enjoyed greatly as we were on the mountain side of the road, rather than the 200ft drop side.
My accommodation is a lovely room in a tumbledown rifugio (in this case a guest house / hostel). No idea how this place ended up on booking.com though! It said that they speak English (they don't) and that there's wifi (there isn't). This all seems appropriate. I've assembled day zero of the blog to post whenever, and the adventure starts here, as the landlady has phoned the two eateries nearby. Both were closed but the second has said he'll open for me! Should be interesting.
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