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Yup, still in Italy but only three hiking days away from Switzerland. Given the number of restaurants, stalls and food outlets I eat from it was only a matter of time before I ate something dodgy… and that’s what happened a few days ago. The pizza was good but the night wasn’t!

Yesterday morning, after a night of propulsion, I was aching from head to foot so checked into a hotel… where I am now. I feel a lot better today, so tomorrow I’ll start heading towards Switzerland again.

The hike from St. Ulrich to Bolzano was a straight forward hill walk and was rather pleasant despite the constant drizzle. I was trying to follow Hiking Trail 3 down into Blumau so I could then hike along the cycle path into the City of Bolzano. The hiking trail was clearly marked on the map. And the hiking trail was even marked (occasionally) on the ground. But despite looking around for almost three hours, getting lost and asking every farmer, tourist and local I could find, there was no Hiking Trail 3 that descended into Blumau. The locals were fascinated by this cartographic mythology!

So in the end, I had to walk along the main road to Blumau… which is always hazardous in Italy. In a lot of Italian towns there are no pavements so the drivers are used to passing people close by – but at 50 miles per hour this is unnerving! But I’ve found a way to get them to give you room. You see, Antonio is quite happy to fly past you with inches to spare on the grounds that ye ol’ Anglo-Saxon here will just bounce off his bumper and vanish down a valley somewhere should he collide with me.

But if I walk with my hiking poles sticking out into the road a bit, he gives me a good two-to-three metres of room! After all, he can’t risk scratching his precious Audi convertible, can he?!

Twat.

From Bolzano to Merano was a 35 kilometre hike along a valley cycle track… and it was hard. I was thinking that walking along the valleys would be easier, but it was hot (well into the 90’s), it was flat and it was as boring as hell. There are markers every kilometre to tell you how far you’ve walked… or rather, how much further you have to go. The whole experience was painful but the natural route into Switzerland from here is along the valley. I’ve two more days like this before I’m back in the mountains.

My approximate route from here will be:

Merano – Ramosche – Davos – Chur – Elm – Lauterbrunnen

I think in all it will take about 16 hiking days from here to Lauterbrunnen and I think four or five of those days will be along valleys. But it’s easy to get carried away planning your way across Switzerland… as countries go, it is tiny, the distances are small… but the mountains are damned high and I am not quite sure how much ground I can cover each day.

Next update will probably be from Davos.

After finally escaping from Cortina d’Ampezzo on my third attempt I am having a day off in St. Ulrich. I picked quite possibly the only remaining route out of Cortina that went West that I hadn’t already tried and failed on: and still managed to get completely lost. I think Italy is the only place in the world where, armed with a hiking map and its way markings, I still manage to lose my way. No mean feat!

Last view of Cortina before I go over Passo Falzarego

It took about 8 hours to get from Cortina, via the Falzarego pass, to the campsite at Armentarola (Camping Sass Dlacia). This is a cool place in a valley and could easily have been used as an awesome base for day hikes… the next day was a simple hike over the 600m mound in the middle of the valley to get to Camping Colfosco on the other side. It was an easy day with staggering views to the Northern Alps and over Maramalada, a “flat”-topped mountain in the distance. I’d never seen anything like Marmalada before:

Marmalada: a mile higher than where I am now

My mountain photos are looking very tedious and poor. I’m not very arty-farty so as I can’t get motivated with mastering photography you’ll have to make do with these filler pictures! I was talking with an artist in Lienz who was doing a mountain-related project and I made the comment that mountains are generally not very photogenic unless you go for the cliched Matterhorn-Reflection-In-Lake shot that everyone knows. She agreed and was actually reading a book on this very subject! Of course, you can get excellent photos of mountain views but outstanding shots are few and far between: you know them when you see them and I bet you can still remember them. But after you’ve seen 10 of them they kind of all look the same. Contrast that with Africa: it’s HARD to get BAD photographs! Point any camera at anything and it looks cool: savanna, Kili, elephants, goats, whatever. I think if you can take stunning mountain photos you’ve mastered The Art!

I put it off for as long as possible but I had to buy some new boots: my Swiss-branded-but-made-in-cheap-labour-Romania Raichl GTX’s were well and truly shot and, my god, did they smell bad. Hazardous, even. Borderline illegal. They are probably the most comfortable boot I’ve ever owned and I’ve been happy with them. I would have bought another pair but I couldn’t find any in Cortina. Instead, I found a pair with an equally ridiculous price tag by Lowa: the Tibet Pro GTX. I am now a Lowa convert. These are TOUGH. Reinforced. And heavy. With rock hard souls and an extra few inches to support your ankle. This is good news because it helps protect your ankle from snapping. But if your ankle should snap, it’s fair to say that that extra boot length is going to make pulling your useless, dangling foot out of the boot hurt like a bastard just that little while longer.

Raichl GTX Boots after about 100 Hiking Days (North Kenya, Kilimanjaro, Mt Meru, Mt Kenya, 50 Days in Europe): The only problem I found with the Riachl GTX was that the front “lip” that comes up over the front of the boot was picked apart very quickly in North Kenya by sharp volcanic rocks. The Lowa has a LOT MORE protection in this area and right around the boot. That said, I would still have bought another pair of Raichls in Cortina if they had them because they held up so well on European terrain

The woman in the shop gave me – free! – some X-Socks (normally 21 Euros). I can’t believe I haven’t seen these before. I can only assume the parents of the dood who designed these were a little disappointed and rolled their eyes when he said: “Mam, Dad: I’m going to make socks for a living!”.

“Of course you are, Dear. There, there. “.

But they are engineered. They are comfortable. For a start, they have all kinds of material to eliminate odour which is excellent news for everyone in the restaurants where I eat. They have all kinds of pads, pressure points and so forth so they are specifically designed for your foot shape (genetic anomolies aside). Check them out: www.x-socks.com. They look like something Darth Vader would wear. It is sad to get excited by socks but I am!

After asking around Cortina, looking in lots of recommended shops that had sold out or didn’t stock it, and generally being passed around like an Altar Boy, I eventually found a place that sells the Forerunner 405 GPS Watch. For 330 Euros. That’s still twice the Amazon UK price so I think it’s fair to say: there will be no GPS watch for me. I am annoyed at myself for not buying this in the Uk before I left. I wanted to plot the cross-sections of my hikes so I could look Rock Hard.

I recently found a website called Camperado and despite what it might sound like, it is not a homosexual meeting place for Italian men. It’s a website showing the location of lots of campsites throughout Europe and I’ve been trying to find my own route into Switzerland using only campsites. There’s a few “big gaps” so I’m not sure what to do on those days – hike along the valleys? Hike along the roads? It is easy to walk 30-40km in a day on the flat so I might just do that some times, but it feels… wrong… it feels like… cheating… it’s also quite annoying because I could use up an entire map in a day and a half and they cost 8 Euros a pop.

I wish I’d found it sooner. It’s really difficult to change your plans when you’re on the go… and expensive… today, in St. Ulrich, I found the first free WiFi I’ve encountered in Italy. Normally, the campsites charge 6-8 Euros per hour for using the Internet which is outrageous. So: St. Ulrich is the place to be for free WiFi. If you happen to be passing by, the Ski Bar at Seceda is where you need to be.

I think I’ve found a way to make millions. And retire early! I am going to sell hearing aid implants in Italy. It is quite clear given the way they shout at each other when they are three feet apart that every Italian is borderline deaf. There can be no other explanation!

I’m a little worried about the remaining journey into Switzerland… it’s high. Really: quite high. And so I need good weather. By the looks of it, from Monday for the next week or so the going is quite good… I am going to push on and try damned hard to get into Switzerland before the 20th August: if I don’t make it by then, it’s unlikely I’ll be able to get all the way to Lauterbrunnen in time. From tomorrow, I am committing myself to seven consecutive days of hiking regardless of the weather: mountain passes, valleys, whatever: doesn’t matter. I must Go West!

Twice. TWICE! I have turned back from leaving Cortina. Yesterday, I planned an exit out of Cortina that took me through the Travenanzes Valley which I was told was stunning (it was). The day started badly because it took me nearly two hours to get from the campsite in southern Cortina [Camping Cortina] to the campsite in the north of Cortina [Olympia] where I intended to start the hike. You see, in Italy there are maps. And there are streets. And there are private streets with lots of dead ends and big dogs that are not included on those maps. And so the day started with lots of urban backtracking. I found it very, very amusing doing this for two hours with a heavy backpack on a hot morning and it’s fair to say I chuckled once or twice. I think everyone should try it some time to see if they agree.

By the time I got towards the head of valley I had already been hiking for six hours and I still had to get over the 2500m summit (the one with lots of black clouds over it). So I turned back, and stayed at the Camping Olympia so that I could get an early start today. In all, yesterday was a 9hr day and I ended it on the other side of Cortina. But the valley was worth the effort and I managed to get a few bad shots:

This place was cool!

I was disappointed with the way they came out so I really need to learn how to expose my camera for shots like that. As I’m on my own and there’s no one else around to place in the picture, I struggle to convey the scale in shots like that. You can see the hiking trail in the bottom right picture… the walls tower 700-1000m above you on each side.

Today I decided to hike out of the valley next to Travenanzes Valley instead. I hiked up for nearly 3 hours, gained most of the altitude… and then turned back because the weather looked sinister and I still had four hours of exposed terrain to go over. I could have pushed on to the refuge which was only 60 minutes away and stayed the night in a tightly packed dorm… but like I said, those are for emergency situations, and instead I retreated to Cortina again.

So now I am back at Camping Cortina which is where I left just yesterday morning. Sixteen hours of hiking in two days: a lot of wasted effort!

I am risk averse when things are out of my control. Realistically, there is no chance whatsoever I would be struck by lightening on exposed terrain and even if I was, it would look dead cool on my gravestone. But hiking up high is supposed to be a pleasure and when the weather is bad, it isn’t. I would just rather not do it. But unlike yesterday, today I am satisfied that I made the right decision because there has been torrential rain and thunder storms for the last four or five hours. RESULT!