The Lagazuoi Tunnels

The last via ferrata of my Italian trip was the easiest, but the beginning was almost as dramatic as the day before. Having decided not to take the cable car from Falzarego, we were coming to the end of what should have been an easy hike up to the top of the mountain where the via ferrata started when the voices of the gods roared, the heavens opened, and we were caught in a mighty thunderstorm. We were only about 20 minutes away from the refuge, but with the path turned into a small stream and rivulets of water streaking down the mountain, 20 minutes was plenty of time to get soaked.


It was perfect timing for the owners of the refuge, however, as we weren't the only ones that took advantage of it being lunch time to order a hot meal and dry out before making our way out across the ridge to where the via ferrata started.

It's hard to tell amongst the jagged stone of the Dolomites, but an enormous chunk of the mountain above Falzarego is missing, not because of natural erosion or disaster, but because during World War One, the Austrians were dominating the ridge from the top and the Italians were lurking lower down. Neither side was making much progress until the Italians, who had created a network of tun.nels in the mountain below, used explosives to blow away a giant section of the crest. The tunnels have now been turned into an outdoor museum and you can rent an audioguide and read information pannels as you make your way along the iron cable to the bottom.

The via ferrata was only a level 1 and we didn't use harnesses, but we were glad of our helmets, torches and fingerless gloves for holding on to the cables. Spending an hour inside a mountain in dank tunnels isn't exactly pleasant but it does give you some inkling of what life was like for the poor soldiers who carried not only all their provisions but tonnes of explosives and weaponry up the steep paths, then slept in the stone caves in inadequate clothes for the subzero winter temperatures. What is harder to understand, of course, is how these men were able to put up with such circumstances for so long, especially with the hindsight of knowing what a terrible waste the whole war turned out to be.

Via Ferrata Merlone

Monday was my second real day of via ferrata-ing and I made dramatic progress, from a scariness point of view if not a technical one. We decided to take on the Ferrata Merlone, a short, but very exposed climb in the Gruppo dei Cadini di Misurina.

We parked the car just beyond the Lago di Misurina and hiked up a trail through the forest, across a beautiful Alpine meadow filled with what seemed to be an amazing variety of flowers, given the dry desolation of the barren rocks that towered above it. From the Rifugio Fratelli Fonda-Savio it was a short walk up the Alta Via trail to the start of the via ferrata.

Iron Ladders

There is not much that requires particular skill about the Ferrata Merlone, but that can be hard to remember when you are several hundred vertical metres up a rock face, with nothing but stones, scree and thin air beneath you. Parts of the route are scrambly, but most of the climbing is actually done on iron ladders attached at a variety of angles to the mountain. I was able to avoid thinking too much about the exposure and the only part I found at all scary was what the guidebook described as an "airy traverse" - a few horizontal metres on a particularly vertical part of the cliff, with only a slippy and somewhat broken ladder for assistance.

Tre Cime di Lavaredo

We ate our sandwiches at the top and enjoyed the views across to the Tre Cime di Lavaredo, but the clouds were drawing in and we soon decided it was time to head down. Unfortunately, a group of about 20 Czechs had decided to come up at that exact moment and they made their turnaround just as we arrived at the top of the cables. With the sky growing ever-darker, we started to make our painfully slow descent in the middle of their group, but after a couple of pitches the raindrops started to fall and, with all those people in front of us, we were going nowhere fast. To top it off, they were clipping 3 people at a time into each section of the cable (you should never have more than one person in each section, otherwise if one person falls they can knock the other off) and a few of them, with clumsy feet, were frequently kicking stones down the mountain, despite the fact that other members of the group below weren't even wearing helmets.

Nobody wants to be caught on the top of a mountain in a thunderstorm, but while being attached to an iron cable is about the worst thing you can do, sitting a couple of metres away from it is actually fairly safe, as the cable will act as a lightning conductor and draw the electricity away from you. We decided that the threat from the humans was worse than the natural dangers and stepped off to the side of the cable to sit and wait.

Luckily for us, although it rained a bit, the thunder and lightning never came and after about 20 minutes we were able to make our way down to the bottom safely. We had learned our lesson though: if you see large groups of people on a via ferrata, steer well clear!

Ferrata di Dibona

On Day 2 of my via ferrata experience, I decided to lower my sights a little and attempt a level 2 ferrata, the nevertheless dramatic-sounding Ferrata di Dibona. We took the Dolomitibus from Cortina to Rio Gere, then the ski-lifts carried us up the mountain to Rifugio G. Lorenzo. The first chairlift was hi-tech and high-speed, with a storm cover and padded seats, but the second was more like the mountain equivalent of a Regionale train, so the total trip took a little while (a lot less than it would have taken us to walk, though!). Up at the refuge, it was quite cold and the wind was blowing clouds around the mountain, but luckily not in the direction we were going.

Rifugio G. Lorenzo. On the left you can just see the longest
ferrata bridge in the Dolomites.

The via ferrata starts with some steep climbing, followed by the longest bridge in the Dolomites, which, compared to the scary wire bridge on my first via ferrata, (in St-Christophe-en-Oisans in France) was reassuringly disappointing, being very solid and firmly attached to both sides of the ravine it was crossing. We did the optional climb to the Cresta Bianca, which gave us a great view down to the refuge and the way we had come.

View of the ridge from the Cresta Bianca

The Ferrata di Dibona is essentially a fabulous, exposed ridge walk. It takes the whole day but most of the trail was not difficult at all, and definitely more like hiking than rock-climbing, although there were bits that would have been a bit scary if we hadn't been clipped in to the cable. You can either come down part-way along and take a not-very-pleasant path across some scree and back to the chairlift, or you can carry on all the way to the end of the ridge and down to Ospitale, where there are buses back to Cortina. We chose the second option, which included no less than 1600m of descent but took a very pretty zigzagging path off the mountain. Most other people seemed to be taking the other route down, so we had the path more or less to ourselves and returned to the bottom with aching knees and heads full of the stunning airy views from the ridge.

Camping in Cortina

I left the B&B early on Saturday morning and hauled myself and all my worldly goods to the bus station. I bought my ticket and the man helpfully told me which stance to go to. This turned out to be just as well, because Treviso bus station has a high-tech system of screens which announce departures, but my bus never appeared on any of them. It was easy enough to find the right place though, as it was the only stop where at least half of the passengers were wearing hiking boots.

Normally I'm not a fan of long-distance bus travel, especially on winding mountain roads, but this coach was air-conditioned and comfortable, and from my seat at the front I had a fabulous view of the increasingly stunning scenery as we wended our way up the valley. And also of the unending drama between the driver and the passengers who wanted to get off along the way. The driver seemed to have decided that some of the stops were request stops and, as we approached them, would ask, in a voice that was far too quiet to be heard at the back of the bus, if anyone wanted to get off. If there was nobody waiting at the stop, he would simply drive straight past, only to be forced to screech to a halt as somebody appeared from the rear seats desperately asking to be let off the bus. For the one lady who had understood his system, though, he chivalrously offered to drop her off outside her house in the village instead of at the official stop. Nevertheless, I was glad that Cortina was the terminus and the bus would have to stop there!

My brother picked me up in Cortina and drove us to the Camping Dolomiti, which is just out of town next to the ski jump that was built for the 1956 Olympics. My brother and his wife had already checked in, so I went to the reception to explain that I would be sharing their camping pitch for the next few days. He had very few teeth and spoke dialect, so we had a hard time understanding each other, but although standard Italian didn't seem to be in his repertoire, he spoke very good French, which helped us to get by. There was a Spanish couple next to me who were trying to find out the best place to get the wheel of their car fixed, and, despite the fact that I don't speak any Spanish, I ended up trying to interpret for them. Any hopes of a possible career change I might have had were swiftly shattered, however, as when I left the office, I heard him say to them, "So, you need to repair the wheel of your bicycle?" Living in polyglot land is fun!

The man was actually very helpful though, and the campsite was lovely. It was shady and had a swimming pool and a great view of the mountains and, best of all, really warm showers and a bar serving delicious hot chocolate, both of which turned out to be an important feature of our holiday, especially when the thunderstorms drew in at the end of the week, soaking us to the skin on the mountain top and testing my 25 euro Decathlon tent to its limits!

Treviso

The main purpose of my trip to Italy this time round was to hike in the Dolomites. My brother and his wife were staying in Cortina d'Ampezzo and had invited me (well, actually, I invited myself) to join them. And, back in May, when I saw the price of train tickets to Milan, I bought them straight away. Train travel is relatively easy in Italy, and I figured I could work out the rest later.

Train travel is easy in Italy. Unfortunately, Cortina doesn't have a train station.

In high season, travelling to Cortina is not actually that difficult. Calalzo, the nearest railway station, is connected to Cortina by a shuttle bus, and there are long-distance coaches from Milan, Venice. Bologna and Padova. Unfortunately, while the transport network is very efficient, the websites which supply this information are not. But after a lot of digging around on the internet, I devised a 27-hour itinerary that took me from Paris to Milan, from Milan to Mestre, from Mestre to Treviso and from Treviso to Cortina.

And so it was that I found myself spending the night in Treviso.

 I stayed at the B&B Appiani 36, a small, friendly and very comfortable little place that I found on http://www.hostelworld.com/. Having dropped off my bags, I had a few hours to explore the city before bedtime.

Treviso is a very pretty little city, although I suspect there isn't much there to occupy visitors for any great length of time. The old town is surrounded by a very clean, very green looking river and fortified by city walls. I found my way to the centre, where, in the main square, I happened to stumble upon a show that was being put on by the local dance schools, so I sat outside on a terrace to watch as I had my tea.



I don't know a lot about dance, but the performances looked pretty good to me. What was strange, however, was being there all by myself. It was one of those occasions where all the local people turn out with their families, chat to their friends and run into everybody else that they know, and where the socialising is as important as the show. I love those evenings in Italy, because Italians do them better than anybody else.

But it made me feel glad that I was meeting my own family the next day. Italy isn't a place to be alone for too long.