I know you have all missed my short stories so I thought I’d push the boat out with this one.

Caroline, Jack, Connor and I just returned from a superb holiday in the Dolomites. We had 2 walking /scrambling days and 4 bike days but on mountain bikes. This was quite a novelty for me as the bikes had these weird things called gears and if you pushed a little lever everything suddenly got a lot easier but also a lot slower! I don't think this idea will catch on as it's far too complicated to get your head around but it did come in handy at times whilst riding up 45 degree scree slopes.

A much better idea than gears for getting up the mountains with little effort was a thing called "the lift pass". You paid the man a ridiculous amount of money and he shoved you and your bike into a cable car which lifted you up about 2000 ft in about 10 minutes. You could then spend the next few miles tearing down the pistes on a bouncy full suspension bike. Even better there are bars every couple of miles on the side of the mountain where you can get beer and grub, before continuing down the slope. Now I'm not one to teach my Grandmother to suck eggs, but Nick is definitely missing a trick here with his off road rides in Delamere so maybe we should ask Cheshire West to install a cable car up Eddisbury Hill.

The first bike day got off to a bad start as we got the lift up at Ortisei and then dropped about 500ft on the other side of the mountain. There was a bit of an uphill so we went on to the granny ring to got up this gravely hill and Caroline shouted, "how do these gears work as mine won't change". I put my wealth of knowledge about derailleur gears into action and quickly established that the rear gear cable had snapped and she was stuck in the 11 sprocket!! 😮 😮 Being a gentleman I gave Caroline my bike and I rode hers using just the chainrings to change gear. Fortunately 5 minutes later we came to a bar with a fully equipped workshop attached to it, probably for fixing piste machines and the like. I borrowed some pliers, shortened the outer cable and managed to get it all working again.

We then faced a 500ft ascent in 1 mile up a 20% hill so Caroline was beside herself laughing all the way to the top. 😆 This being a civilized country there was of course a café / bar on the summit so we had some dinner and gazed a across the very deep valley to some 9000ft spikey mountains opposite. We spent the next 4 hours covering a few spectacular miles of steep climbs / steep rocky descents and pleasant undulating pasture on the Alpe di Siusi High Pasture, which is the largest area of high pasture in Europe.

The next 2 days we went half on road and half off road but all in spectacular terrain. On day 3 we rode mostly down hill to the Passo Sella at 2240m for dinner and the lads decided to go back to the hotel down the pass road so they could go slacklining. Caroline and I went over the top and down a great track to the bottom of Passo Sella and then we rode back up the pass road which clings to the side of the spectacular Salla massif with its sheer limestone walls rising to 10,000ft above sea level. This was a pig of a climb and it forms one of the 4 mountain passes that make up the Sella Ronda circuit which as its name suggests, circumnavigates the Sella Massif. We gained 1800ft in 4 miles and then battered it down the hairpin decent on the other side overtaking cars all of the way down.

Day 4 the other had a lie in so I decided to get up early and tackle the Sella Ronda seeing as I was in the area. This is normally done on road bikes, but I didn’t have on so made do with a heavy full suspension mountain bike just to make it a bit more of a challenge. The hotel was in Selva so I had a 2 mile warm up, climbing on a 10% road from the doorstep to the start of the Sella Ronda, where Passo Gardena meets Passo Sella. I then continued for another 4 miles to the top of Passo Sella at 2240m altitude. It had taken 45 minutes to cover the 6 miles. I stopped to put my waterproof on for the 4 mile decent to the junction with the Passo Pordi road. The decent took 15 minutes and was great fun around the hairpins but my fingers were freezing as it was early morning so the sun had not warmed up the air.

Passo Pordi then took me back up to 2039m in 4 miles and the decent that followed was an amazing 7 miles of 10 – 15% gradients and 30 hairpins to the town of Arabba. The climb of Passo Campolongo was an easy 3 miles of 10% and then another 4 mile decent to Cordova. Unfortunately after two long descents and one short climb I had to get up Passo Gardena which is about 7 miles long and by now a getting quite busy with traffic. I realized at the top of passo gardena that I would be close to completing the Sella Ronda in 3 hours so I battered it down the pass only to miss out by 1 minute and 15 seconds when I reached the junction with Passo Gardena. I then had a rapid 5 minute freewheel down the final hairpins and back to Selva.

The total ride took me 3hrs 19m and I covered only 36.17 miles at an average speed of 10.9 mph. however I did 6,293 ft of climbing with no flat roads to speak of. I would recommend this Region as the cycling is fantastic and the mountains are spectacular and very different to other Alpine mountains. For those of you who like Sportifs there are 2 Sella Ronda Bike days in June and September with thousands of cyclists taking part on closed roads, but personally I prefer to enjoy the whole experience on my own rather than weaving around masses of bikes and braking constantly on the descents as people get in the way.

Coincidentally I found out afterwards off Jack that the day before Kris Zentek rode the Sella Ronda with is mates. What a strange coincidence. I get he did it a lot quicker on a road bike. How did you get on Kris and did you do the anti-clockwise route like me or the other way? Passo Pordoi from Arabba was very long and I bet it would be a classic climb.
Cheers

Dave