Piemonte and an Incredible Confluence of Interests

Lago di Viverone was the perfect place for a rest day. This is where our tour goes from a peaks tour to a beaches tour. We only swam in the lake once because it was fairly cold, but the weather was warm and we got some laundry done. It turns out they'd had the Internet we'd been looking for in Ivrea all along. We also rode into town (no bags! so light!) and bought some fresh bread and other Italian treats, like focaccia, that were uniquely delicious. We had dinner at the pizzeria attached to the campground, which was very busy every night, and discovered that it was a very well deserved busy. We drank outstanding wine.

Our next destination was an agriturismo called Cascina Nuova, just outside of Valenza. It had been tough to find campsites south of Lago di Viverone. This popped up on a search as a place we may be able to set up a tent. And we figured if we couldn't put up a tent, we'd get a room. 

The route we took headed almost due south until the Po River, where we saw, on our new map, that there was a path along the River. We'd take the Po east until we needed to head south toward Valenza. 

One thing we'd started to notice by this point was that the people of Italy were fascinated and delighted by the sight of us. Okay, probably not everyone felt that way, but unlike anywhere else we've traveled by bicycle, in Italy people stopped, stared, and smiled, sometimes even cheering us on. We stopped in a town for a cappuccino and watched as people stopped by our bikes and had a good look at them. Some kids were absolutely fascinated and excited by our bikes. It was delightful for everyone involved. 

The weather was incredibly weird. It was warm out with high clouds that the sun almost came through. Plus there was a low haze. We kept expecting it to change, but it just stayed that way. 

The light was weird, but every once in a while we got glimpses of clouds that Michelangelo would have painted. This was our first tour that took us through fields and fields of rice.

My camera did not know what to do with this light.

As we neared the Po, we came upon a sign with information about the Fiume Po Bike Path. Nearby there were benches, so we decided this might be the perfect place for lunch. Joshua started setting up our picnic and I went to learn about the bike path from the map. As I stood there, three people on bicycles almost went by, but then circled back to where I was standing. I understood from their Italian conversation that they were about to invite us to go with them.

They first asked where we are from and what language we speak. They laughed, because they had predicted that it was unlikely we were Italians. They said they were on their way to a local event, a bit of a festival celebrating the restoration of an old Grangia into an info center about cycling in the area and along the Po River. 

Rivers and bicycles.

When we lived in Los Angeles, Joshua and I were on the board of a non-profit that supported the use of bicycles in the city (The Bicycle Kitchen). At the same time, I worked for a non-profit that was working toward revitalization of the Los Angeles River (FoLAR). One aspect of the river work involved the bike path that was and is being built along the LA River. It's a tough river to help, not only because it's been neglected for so long but also because it flows through many cities between the San Fernando Valley and Long Beach. Jurisdiction is mixed, to over-simplify the problem. There are long stretches with bike path and gaps that are inconvenient and unfortunate. 

The people we met randomly in Italy are working to create a bike path that goes the length of the Po, from Piemonte all the way to Venice / Venezia. 

The summer before we left LA, a daring trip along the LA River took place and a group of people kayaked from the headwaters to the mouth of the river. This summer, the first guided tours of the LA River by kayak took place.

The first boat trips along the Po in this area took place just two years ago.

The parallels are awesome.

So we went with these people to have a lunch of local food - which turned out to be a particular local dish called panissa, a risotto con fagioli (rice and beans) - and learn more about these projects.

following our new friends

surprise lunch!

an incredible two of three panels of the planned bike route across the top of Italy

Our hostess was Maria Teresa Bergoglio, who works for the Parco Fluviale del Po e dell'Orba, and we also met one of the local park rangers, Nicola Scatassi. They told us about the building we were at, an old Grangia, or grange, which had been restored to become a local info center. Inside there were a number of bikes, from the first, simple bread delivery models to today's speedy roadie versions. This area of Piemonte is the historical home of rice. A Grangia is essentially an old village that was there to grow, harvest, and process rice. Each Grangia had a small church, places for the workers to live, and grain processing facilities. Feudal times, indeed. Today, most of them are privately owned and not well maintained. This one is the first that has been renovated for a use that would benefit the public. 

We were pretty stunned. Nowhere in our travels have we been invited to share a meal and learn about the local projects that are going on. We felt like we had stumbled over the alternate universe of our previous lives. Stunned. Everyone was friendly, curious, and full of great information that we were curious to learn. 

They had a journalist with them who said he'd be writing a news story about the American bike tourists coming through and using the path and attending the event. 

They also knew about Cascina Nuova and said the owners were very nice people and it was a great destination. They were not sure about any campsites anywhere. They gave us a few of the bike maps for the river that they'd created recently. 

After a couple of hours of chatting and eating, we said we had to get on our way and we went on down the path. Our tires were no match for the rock gravel. To make up some time, and because we do prefer a paved route, we continued on the road route rather than along the river, which was a bit sad. We really really want them to have the success they are aiming for. Their model is the Donau/Danube path through Austria, the most highly trafficked bike route in all of Europe. Cafes, inns, B&Bs, tour groups, historic sites - they want that stuff. Sounds like an incredible and perfect idea. 

By the end of the day, we were tired, hot, and sick of mosquitos. We ended up spending quite a bit of time on rough roads and it was exhausting. When we finally made it to Cascina Nuova, we didn't even know if we were there - because we'd come off the path closer to the river and there were no signs. It wasn't exactly a high traffic path. We looped around and eventually made it to the front, realizing that it had been the right place, and waited for someone - an owner? - to show up. When he did, we met yet another wonderful, welcoming, and interesting Italian. 

Cascina Nuova is a farm run by the grandson of the previous farmer. He grew up in Milan, but preferred the rural life on the farm with his grandfather, and he's been successfully running it for almost 20 years. They changed it to an organic farm and he told us about the organic wine makers and other organic farmers in the area and how they formed a collective and managed to make things work. 

When we asked if we could camp, he said yes, told us where the bathrooms and showers were, and wasn't going to charge us anything. We asked about rooms and he showed us a gorgeous, large room that we couldn't resist. We asked if we could have our dinner (our bread, cheese, lettuce dinner) on the patio where there was a table and he said of course! Then he brought us fresh tomatoes from his garden - the best tomatoes - and a box of wine made by his friends who make wine. We sat together drinking a glass of wine and sharing bread and cheese until his friends showed up to watch the soccer game together. 

What is this magical land of river revitalization and bicycle advocates and organic farmers? Piemonte, who knew? And how did we run into all of them in one day?

Into Italy

Okay, two years ago we thought we'd start in Italy and go north. Plans were delayed by a few weeks, we started in Zurich and went north. Last year we thought we'd go to Italy after a detour in Greece, but we were out of money and started house sitting earlier than expected. This year...

This year we were going to head straight into Italy from Zurich, and then we decided to work on getting Joshua's residence visa first, which meant heading north into Germany. But then we got the visa. And then we went back to Zurich. And over the Alps. And into France. From Chamonix, there is a bus that goes through the Mont Blanc Tunnel and you can bring your bike. You emerge on the Italian side, at the head of the Val d'Aosta. That is just what we did.

The tunnel was kind of cool. You had to stay 500 meters behind the vehicle in front of you. They staged the entrance with a red light-green light so you had to wait to enter, and once inside there were distance markers to help you figure out if you were staying far enough behind. It's only two lanes, one in each direction. And the trucks just barely fit, it seemed. There are speed maximum and minimum limits and everyone moved at the exact same pace. No passing. Not very French.

And what happens when you start at the top of a narrow valley through the Alps? You get to go down, down, down. Of course, there aren't a lot of great pictures from our descent, because we were going fast, downhill. The road options for cyclists are limited. There's the freeway - obviously not an option - and then there's the main road which is not the freeway. Route 26. It's fairly wide and there are some large-ish trucks, usually there's a shoulder. But it's not the freeway, and most of the traffic is on the freeway (which is often in tunnels, actually). Route 26 just goes down. At a really lovely angle. In fact, I think if we had been in some kind of hurry or if we wanted to skip everything in the Val d'Aosta, we could have done the whole thing in a day and barely pedaled at all.

fast views

As it was, we figured it would take us two days. The first half of the first day we just went down on Route 26. At one point we saw a sign for a pista ciclabile, so we thought we'd try it out. There was a bridge that was closed, which we crossed anyway. We couldn't find another way to get to the path, which we could see. The signs were weird.

And while the path was beautiful and ended up winding through lovely trees, it wound uphill and turned in the wrong direction. Risk it? Maybe it loops back? We decided that we'd just go back to the 26. Maybe it's a local bike path for recreation and stuff. It would have been awesome to have had more information or to have been able to use it.

But the 26 continued to be good.

Lunch break by a river, at a bend in the road, and with a great view. Time to dry out the tent!

In the afternoon, we veered from the 26 to see about a smaller road. We were also on the lookout for campsites. Joshua kept saying he had a feeling there was a path along the river, but we'd seen no signs or any evidence that such a path existed. We tried to find an alternative road that didn't go straight up into the mountains, but only found a few dead ends on the south side of the river. So we decided to cross it, and as we did we saw a bike path, going right along the river. We immediately turned around and searched for an entrance. Pedestrians could get to it fairly easily, but on a bike we had to backtrack really far until there was a stretch without a fence. And even then there was no curb cut onto the sidewalk by the entrance. Oh boy. But we made it! And it was good.

There's a push to get a route all along the Dora Baltea, the river that flows down the middle of the Val d'Aosta and eventually joins with the Po River. There are completed stretches and stretches that are not open. But it's going to be so great when they complete it! Go Italy!

The landscape was pretty dramatic. At some points we saw the snow-topped peaks of the higher mountains to either side of us. A couple of smaller valleys came in from the side and showed us glaciers and other wonders of Alpine beauty. There were tiny towns dotting the landscape.

When we emerged at the end of one stretch of completed bike path, we finally saw a sign with the full map. We took some pictures. This photo may not be helpful, but if you are going to cycle this route and you want better pictures, we took close ups of this map in sections. Cycling the Val d'Aosta is easy and fun, in the downhill direction, but finding information about where to go is not as easy as it should be. Or, I didn't find what I wanted when I looked it up online. I would be thrilled to help someone else find this path during the planning stage for a Val d'Aosta bike tour.

We went up and through a tiny town with a Chateau, still away from the 26 and on the south side of the river. Wait. Chateau? Turns out 70% of people in this region of Italy speak French. hmph. French is nice, but we're ready for Italian! Below the Chateau we stopped at a cafe and had a glass of house white, which was slightly bubbly, along with a couple panini con tomate e formaggio. We continued up the road after lunch, and I mean up, and found a small store where we bought supplies for dinner. At some point we realized that the map we were using was going to be crappy. Up we went. It was stunning. The tiny villages built into high, steep hillsides were silent and perfect. Far below we could see the river... is there a bike path down there? Who knows? This looks like the only road besides the 26. If there's a campsite it is way down there...

The possibility of wild camping was open to us. We had found a water fountain and filled up all the bottles. We had food. But there didn't seem to be a single, flat enough space that hadn't already been used for growing grapes or grazing sheep. The road went back down toward the river.

The scene now is that we're ready to stop. We're tired, we've probably gone between 70 and 80kms, there is no campsite where there was going to be a campsite, we've climbed a lot. A lot. And we are thinking about going to a bed and breakfast. We crossed the river and followed a road on the north side. We tried a dirt and sand road that went back upstream, but there were no good spots to pitch a tent.

Back on the road through a small town, there was a left hand turn with a strange sort of sign. There were distances marked and arrows pointing in either direction and a logo or something that we did not recognize. We did figure out that it was open to pedestrians but not cars. So we took it. It was a great path. Unfortunately, we were near the end of it. About 3kms farther we reached the end and a sign showing us that this was another recreational route. Another route along the river that would have been awesome to know about! We doubled back into a small grove of trees and decided to wild camp right there, even though the path was supposed to be closed during the night. As usual, there was some anxiety about being caught where we were not supposed to be camping, but the night was uneventful.

In the morning we packed up quickly and got moving again. It was pretty chilly before the sun managed to rise over the peaks around us. We tried to continue on a path that turned to dirt, but came up with a dead end - or rather the continuation of a path we could have hiked, but not biked. We did some exploring to see if we could figure out where we could ride and ended up under the freeway, poking around for a way out. Nothing even remotely appealing presented itself and we weren't sure we'd end up anywhere but on the freeway. Where was the 26 now? We were in a pretty narrow section of the valley, just where it turns south at Chatillon.

So we backtracked and made our way up the steep valley roads on the north east side of the valley, on a hunch that the 26 was actually high above us. We were right, and after some great hairpin turns and an on-foot push up an old footpath that was steeper than anything else we've ever pushed our bikes up, we were just below the 26 and unable to find an entrance.

Time for breakfast in the sun! Joshua asked a passing woman how we could get our bikes on the road and her instructions, in French, were to go out the parking lot, go down, go back up, and we'd see the entrance. Descendez!? We just climbed all this way! But it wasn't so bad, and we made it back to the speedy 26 where we stayed for the rest of the morning until we hit Ivrea, where we proceeded to waste a bunch of time.

Every time we get to a city we have a conundrum. What to do with the bikes? We figure there's some great stuff to do, often we have the equivalent of errands to run, and at the same time we're riding oversized bikes in crowded, unfamiliar streets, where every time we stop we get in the way of someone. We did have a really lovely lunch at a cafe in a park. It was warm and sunny and outdoors.

Then we started looking for the Internet, which we never found. The local library had Internet, but it was closed until 2pm. We checked out the old walking streets of Ivrea, which are beautiful, and got ourselves the first gelati of the trip. Oh yums. In fact, Joshua said he wouldn't have one, so I just got one. Then he ate half so I got a second one and we shared that too. It was some of the best gelato I've ever had. When the library opened, we learned that we just couldn't get Internet. The librarian made a comment about how crappy that was, since you can get WiFi in Africa, but not here in the piazza. She told us about an Internet cafe, which we found, but had changed into a normal cafe. New owners, no more Internet. We bought a cycling map at a kiosk that we liked a lot.

We finally decided that we did not need to know what was in our email and headed out of town towards Lago di Viverone, where we were going to camp that evening. On the way, we saw a bio (organic) food store so we stopped. Not open until 3:30. It was still only 2:30. Forget it! And off we went again.

Lago di Viverone was fantastic. In fact, we decided it was the perfect place to take a rest day.

 we even went swimming in the lake

All along I've been complaining about how incredibly heavy my hair is. There's a lot of it. I want it off.

It Could Be The Altitude

Like so many of our "problems", the lack of a train the whole way to Chamonix was simply a bit of a challenge to overcome. With very little discussion, we opted to take the train as far as it would take us. The border at Le Chatelard is actually most of the way up. The steepest, gnarliest climbing happens over that first section, rather than over the last section of the road. The remaining climbing had to be accomplished over a mere 9kms, and then it would be downhill for about 10kms. We pictured the last 9kms of Grimselpass and prepared ourselves, at least mentally, for switchbacks and steep turns.

The train ride itself was incredible. They really haul you up a big mountain, very slowly and at a steep angle. There is one part that goes over a crazy stone bridge that was on some postcards we'd just sent out. But very little of this dramatic ride was captured on camera, and what we did get was not captured very well.

from the train

And the riding turned out to be totally manageable. As we got off the train, with a whole train car full of German tourists, people gaped. One man asked if we were going up or down, and we pointed up. Gasp! They were meeting their own tour bus. In other words, they rode the train just to see the view from the train. The bus went via the road and would now take them to Chamonix.

Joshua practiced one of his best German phrases on a large German man: "Wollen Sie mit mir kommen?"

And he got a good laugh out of the long line of ladies waiting for the bathroom, one of whom said, "Es gibt Keinen Platz", referring to the already loaded nature of our bikes. Off we went.

The road was not too steep. It steadily went upward, but in a way that I might have enjoyed all day long. And there were beautiful flowers. After a few kilometers, the bus full of Germans passed us and we waved.

French Alps!

In fact, we were not quite convinced we'd reached the top, even when we did. The road veered down, so we knew it was possible. But it hadn't been all that hard, so perhaps another big climb was in our future? We had stopped where we could have a little picnic, and a hiking trail started there, next to an info center of some kind. So there was an info board with map. The Col des Montets. Yup, the top. 

this is the top?

really?

great news!

Another hand-achingly long downhill commenced.

glacier

As if to make up for the great time we'd made, we rode around forever in search of the campsite. It looked like there were two, right in town, but we didn't quite have a detailed enough map - yet again. We rode west and away from the center of town for a while and then rode up to the south to see if we could get a view. Nope. So then we said we'd head back into the center and find an info office or something - and bam! Campsite, right there. 

glacier above our tent

So now we're in Chamonix, where you go if you want to see Mont Blanc. So? Let's go see Mont Blanc!

should we be worried about this cable bubble? not as on-time as the Swiss. not as Swiss.

up we go

part of the way up, people were already jumping off. so cool.

Okay, where does this thing go?  That teeny, tiny spike on top of that big mountain, just before it falls off to the right.  It's called the Aiguille du Midi.  Is this a good time to mention that the doors on our car were broken?  When the car arrived at the transfer point from the top of the mountain the doors would not open.  An operator from the outside had to manually force the doors open - it took him a long time appear.  This did not inspire confidence...

yikes!

and there are people out there

Mont Blanc, somewhere in the clouds

this place is...

great for rock-climbing!

we may be a bit loopy from the altitude

we tried to take some photos together, but it was toooooo bright

The Aiguille du Midi is straight out of World of Warcraft or Game of Thrones. But truly, stunningly scary. This time the expensive ticket didn't include everything. No, you must pay an extra 3 Euros per person to go up in the elevator to the actual top. Zee French! 3 Euros!? 

so worth it

rock climbing

To go outside into the snow, you had to have your own ice pick and spiked boots, and warmer, drier clothing than we did. They go for 3 day hikes and camp out there. 

On the way down we decided to stop and get off at the transfer point. Different climate, different scenery. Also, there were these two donkeys.

Joshua

it could be the altitude