Almost to the Top: Another day in Austria

September 30, 2011

We were fortunate when we woke as it was a beautiful morning for what was to be our big day of climbing. It is suprising how different this pass is from the Grand St Bernard Pass which we crossed in 2009. the St Bernard Pass is of course much higher but because the original valley is much wider it just goes up and up with no downs. The Inn valley from which the Reissenpass leads is much narrower so you are constantly going up to get over huge rocky outcrops or cliffs then coming down again wasting all that hard earned height. This of course makes the total climbing so much more than the height of the pass indicates.

We somehow missed a turning and found ourselves heading up on a busy road towards the pass only to find that not only were we on the wrong side of the river according to our now excellent maps but we were heading for a tunnel, coming down again was fast and felt much safer than the slow, wobbly uphill. Across the bridge and onto the correct road, this thankgoodness had far less traffic. We were soon in Switzerland but that only lasted hour or so as we swopped down the hill we had just climbed to cross the bridge back into Austria and to say goodbye to the Inn. I think it has been my favourite river so far particularly in its upper reaches where it is wild, powerful and that wonderful milky blue colour. The road from here onwards looks like a picture of intenstines on the map and the soon got too much for me. It was OK pushing our bikes and we looked across the valley to judge how high up the mountain we were. One thing that has interested me is the amount of wood used in the Tyrol. The houses all have it as part of their structure. Inside houses it is used extensively, there are little wooden huts dotted all over the pastures, bridges are very frequently constructed of it and there are massive neat piles of wood ready to warm up what must be a very cold winter. This means that there is forestry every where and very high up.

Eventually after 9km of steep uphill pushing we reached the lovely high Alpine Austrian town of Naunders. this is only about 150m lower than the pass and about 7km from the Italian border. Thhey had wonderful coffee, lots of places to stay, it is a beautiful little town and a strong head wind had sprung up. All this was too much for me although Ken was keep to push on but kindly bowed to my wishes! He is pleased now as this is lovely up here, we have walked around a lot, inspected the castle and the small agriculture which is all around us on these high meadows. Yesterday I said we would be in Italy today now it will be tomorrow,

Looking down into Switzerland as we start the last hard push to Naunders

Ken wishes Lucy would help him in the garden like this puss is.

Today's ride: 41 km (25 miles)
Total: 3,400 km (2,111 miles)

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