For a change, we haven’t planned out in detail our whole route through Italy, but we have a pretty good rough itinerary in mind.   We’re budgeting about seven weeks to the country, making it the largest component of the tour.  The tentative route we have mapped out feels ambitious enough - 900 miles with 60,000’ of elevation, plus day rides.  It traces an arc that roughly follows the country’s northern border: from Trieste we’ll head northwest to the Dolomites; continue west through the Lake District; and then drop south to traverse the Piemonte to the sea, crossing into France in early November.

Partway through this stretch of the tour we’re going to change our model of recent years, and figure out our destinations and lodging as we go rather than locking ourselves in by booking all our lodging in advance.  There are several reasons for this: we want to pace ourselves, taking longer breaks here and there when we find someplace especially attractive or feel the need for some time off the road; and we want to build in more flexibility to work around late autumn’s weather, which we expect will bring more wind and rain our way than we’ve gotten used to.

You’ll note too that the profile gets significantly easier midway through Italy.  After we leave the Dolomites we expect we’ll keep to fairly low elevations all the way to Barcelona, in deference to the late season.  That big spike in the middle of the profile?  That’s Stelvio.  We’ll see.