Day 52 - Naturns to Gomagoi - Oh The Places You'll Go - 2025

June 1, 2025

Day 52 - Naturns to Gomagoi

Public Bashes and Baths

A day of two distinctly different halves, time wise, not distance.

After a great breakfast at Hotel Lamm, we set off west on the next-to-perfect Ciclovia 2 / Etch Radweg / Cilclovia Valle dell’Adige / Claudia Augusta Bike route - take your pick of names this wonderful network goes by - that’s been our friend for the last few days.

It was the same-old, same-old apple orchards and alpine peaks to the right and left, a full phalanx of ‘organized tourers’ bearing down on us from the front, and lots of time to spin the pedals and let your mind wander. That’s often a dangerous thing for me, as I’ll often end up waaay off track, but here that’s almost impossible as the cycle path is so obvious and well marked. If you really zoom in on the GPS track you’ll only see two, maybe three, small deviations. That’s a great success for me.

One of the places that both our minds wandered, to no surprise, was apples. At one point as K was cruising along right behind me (she does this more as a protective measure … to keep me going the right way) she made the poignant observation …. ‘there’s a lot of apples here!’

How many? - you may ask. Well we stopped by an apple processing facility where their empty ‘harvest crates’ were stacked and I had a little Sir John Harvey Jones moment, the sort where he’d do a back of the envelope mental calculation. First though, we rode for well over a minute, closer to two, beside the huge stack of crates, I estimated it at about 400 m long. When we got off our bikes I had a closer look at the crates and counted one side of the stack - 12 high by 12 deep, and each crate looked to be about 1 cubic metre (big!). That’s over 50,000 crates, and each crate would hold about 1500 apples (if perfectly round and stacked and an ‘average apple ~200 g’). That’s about 80 million apples, give or take a few million! From this one facility - and there were several others like this around in the area we could see.

That out of the way we pedalled along a little longer and then crossed over to the south side on the Adige for a few km’s of gravel road riding. I think they threw this in just for a change. It was smooth, dry and hard packed, and a nice change from the pavement. Just before crossing back over to the paved north side at Lasa, we came across a nice little bike cafe beside a small private fishing lake. A nice cold drink and a rest and then we pushed on to Prato Allo Stelvio.

In Prato we saw one of the oddest things on this trip. It was right around noon and we wanted to grab a light lunch here, but being a Sunday there were limited options available. We pulled off the road onto a a sidewalk near the centre of the town to consult Google (always a risk). While we’re doing this we noticed there’s a very interesting old barn right across the street. I’m pulling out my camera to take a picture when we glance off to our right … and see a guy stripped down and bathing himself in the public ‘fountain / trough’. This is not an ‘out of the way trough’, it’s basically at one of the busiest intersections of this decent sized town.

He’s trying to look inconspicuous, but not doing a very good job of it , and its clear that he’s not homeless - looks almost like a middle aged cycle tourer- and here I am holding my camera with the big zoom lens. OK, who’s the weirdo?

At the same time I’m having this internal debate, ‘do I take the picture of the barn as I intended or do I put my camera away so it doesn’t look like I’m trying to snap this guy’, a farm tractor pulling a trailer comes up to the intersection at the same time as a car is coming on the intersecting road …. Neither one seems to want to yield and the ‘tractor guy’ is leaning out swearing in German (or is that just ‘normal German? - beats me) and the woman is leaning out the window of her car giving him the finger.

Collision was avoided. Bath guy was clean. I got my barn picture … and there was an open restaurant right beside us.

So much excitement in such a small space of time.

Prato Allo Stelvio also acts as a great big Harry Potter sorting hat. It’s here where the Claudio Augusta route continues north over Rechen pass and into Austria. This is where that vast majority (and 100% of the organized touring folks) touring cyclist go, and the lovely cycle path continues.

However a few intrepid (or deluded) folks continue west on the SS58. After a few nice km’s on a separate 4% grade bike lane to Ponte Stelvio, the bike lane ends, and the grade stiffens up to about 7% and goes on ….. forever.

We weren’t riding to forever today though, only to Gomagoi, a small cluster of houses, a church and two very nice hotels at the junction of the road that heads off to the Solda ski resort.

We’re staying at the very nice Hotel Gallia (Garlic according to spell check) and heading of to Solda tomorrow to take in the last Messner Mountain Museum … dedicated to Ice. Solda is on the flanks of The Ortler, the largest mountain in this region at just under 4000 m and with large glaciers. The perfect place to examine the Ice aspect of mountaineering. The museum doesn’t open until 2 pm so it was out of the question for today. We’ll have a nice casual morning tomorrow and then set off for Solda around noon. We’ll have another night at the Gallia and then ….. Stelvio - weather permitting.

Heart

Comment

Link

Jacquie GaudetOof! That flip up at the end!
Reply to this comment
1 week ago

So long to the lovely folks at Hotel Lamm in Naturns

The apple crates that gave rise to my SJHJ moment. The stack continues for a long way around the curve.

Pedal, look around, think happy thoughts

The spot of the moment of brilliant insight ‘ “Yes, there are a lot of apples here!”

Nice little gravel section along the south bank of the Adige, replete with covered wooden bridges

Our lovely ‘bike only’ cafe on the outskirts of Lasa

Hard even for me to get lost here. Just follow the apples and keep heading to those big white mountains

Pick a direction to look … just beautiful

‘The Barn’ in Prato Allo Stelvio. The public water tough is just off to our right …. Bath Guy was still there ‘drying out’ on a bench in the sun

The tail end of one of the Viking Cruise’s coming into town from the north along the Via Claudia Augusta. I think the two younger folks were using the wider streets in the town as a ‘passing lane’. Good luck as this is just the tail end of the group. There were at least 20 more in it. This is maybe a good little test of Grimace/Smiley …. Come up with your count in this group and post a comment!

Nice little water mill in Prato … dates from the 15th century and has obviously been maintained and refurbished a bit.

OK, now we’re on our own. I think the pass just opened in the last couple of days, and this was Sunday. Surprisingly, the traffic was very light, and the conditions were perfect (just verging on hot when the sun was out)

Wow, this would be perfect if it went all the way! Unfortunately it only lasted about 3 km’s, but it was still great.

valley narrowing and getting a little steeper. Still beautiful

… lovely dining room …. And very good dining was done!

…...ooooh . Looking east to where we came from. It stayed there thankfully.

Channeling some of the Messner’s Mountain Magic we picked up yesterday.

Another very good Lagrein - still drinking very local

My classic Tyrolean clear consommé with a veal dumpling

We both had pappardelle with venison ragout. Pretty sure the venison was butchered and processed in the garage where the bikes are. This is ‘eating local’. It was great.

More protein - essential for building and maintaining major muscle groups

SOTD

Mr. Obtuse pays another visit …..

We received another monthly update today about our beloved pup Levi, who’s in the final stages of his service dog training and being matched with a client. My nick name for him was Buddy Guy, and that also happens to be one of my favourite blues guitarists.

So, Do Your Thing by Buddy Guy …. ‘Cause, well, you know …. that’s what we were doing today, and apparently a few other folks we saw were as well!

A very good night from Hotel Gallia in Gomagoi, after this we’re going for a bath.

Today's ride: 41 km (25 miles)
Total: 2,287 km (1,420 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	9
Comment on this entry	Comment	0