Day 12

August 30, 2021

Mals to Meran

I’m not sure how to characterize today. It was a lot of things at a lot of different times. I’m not even quite sure how to organize this write-up. I’ll attempt chronological.

All days as a cycle tourist begin with breakfast. I ate a bunch. 3 rolls, a yogurt, some fruit (rare at breakfast here), and a croissant. I packed up the last final things and loaded up the bike for the ride downhill to Meran. After all the uphill the last two days I was looking forward to this. The sun was attempting to peek out. It was cold, but not as cold as I thought it would be. The wind also had finally calmed down and according to my weather app would stay that way for once. It looked like a nice day to coast to Meran.

Bit of snow in the mountains across the valley from Mals

Up this other valley is some sort of Radweg according to my Pocketearth app

My coasting took me first back through Laatsch and on to Glurns. The patches of blue sky were starting to get sparse when I reached Glurns. This was the town with the medieval wall I quickly passed by two days ago. This time I popped in with the intent of cycling through town. It was a nice but not terribly practical idea. There’s not much to Glurns. I actually had to backtrack to get out of town.

One of the war bunkers rotting away in a field

The small town square of the small medieval town of Glurns

I was expecting to not have to pedal today, but actually there were some rather flat spots and some brief uphills. It was rather disappointing after thinking I’d have, in essence, a rest day. At times the sun would come out and things would warm up a bit. It was nice. I reduced my clothing by a layer. Instead of taking my shortcut near Sponding, I decided to take the official route leading back to Prad. The first part of it was through another conservation area with dramatic views of the Stilfser Joch. The glacier had an extra layer of snow as did the higher mountains after it snowed up there last night. For the high reaches of the mountains here, winter is not far off. I’m thinking today would not have been a favorable day to summit the famous Stelvio Pass.

A castle off in the distance. Way off in the distance. Trust me, it’s there.

A glacier way off in the distance and shrouded in cloud

Back in there is the famous Stelvio pass

The nature reserve that I bypassed two days ago. Nice area

Also in the nature reserve. It’s a much different landscape from the area around it.

Beyond Prad things took a downward turn. The sun went away and the wind picked up. The problem is, the wind had reversed direction from the previous days. Clearly I am cursed to always ride into a headwind. To accompany that cold headwind was also periodic bouts of rain. Never very hard, but enough to tempt me to stop and put on my rain pants (I was already wearing a rain coat because it was getting chilly.) Finally near Goldrain I stopped under an underpass and dug deep down into my panniers and located my rain pants. The weather report did not seem to think it would rain so I packed all of that stuff at the bottom of the bag.

A nice garden along the way. Roses seem popular around here

Maybe a lot of Europeans don’t read English and that’s why they haven’t gotten the message about smoking??

I was also hungry. It appeared there would be a super market in Goldrain and I recalled having seen one when I passed through two days earlier. When I arrived at the store the lights were off and the doors were closed. They close from noon to 3pm every day. The precise time of day when a hungry cyclist would be looking for lunch. Brilliant. And there was a sign on the outskirts of town promoting this grocery store too. Also the town bakery was closed. At least the train station bathroom was open, but that might be all that was open in Goldrain this time of day.

By the time I escaped Goldrain the actual rain had largely subsided. The wind remained however and so I kept the rain pants on for added warmth. I hate riding in rain pants. The swish swish and restriction of movement drives me nuts. Perhaps that accounts in part for my ever lowering spirits.

Fishing clubs are popular around here along with their restricted club members only ponds

The weather did brighten up over the course of the afternoon, but the long awaited continued downhill didn’t materialize like I’d expected it too. In fact, much of the elevation lost occurred on a dirt section of trail through another nature preserve. With touring tires and a loaded recumbent I’m not about to whiz down a loose dirt trail at 20+mph. It wouldn’t end well. Instead I applied the brakes using the front as much as possible and the rear lightly when necessary. Too much rear brake will lock the tire. That means the tire will skid. When it skids you also get to skid. On the ground. In the mean nasty dirt that will cut you. Take my word on this, or read the journal about my 2nd tour where I saw the snake and locked my brakes while going 8mph on a dirt trail and wiped out.

I was still trying to find a source of food that was open without needing to sit down at a restaurant. I wanted to make use of the window of rain-free weather as long as I could. Around 2:45pm I arrived in Naturns and found a grocery store right at my turnoff into town advertising that they sold fruit. Perfect. I love fruit. I walked up to the doors and they wouldn’t open. Turns out they also close from noon to 3. That explained why at 2:54pm there were a bunch of people sitting around the parking lot. They were waiting for the store to open. That did it. I was not going to wait another 6 minutes for Italians to decide to open a store. I rode further down the street to an MPreis, a chain grocery store. They, unlike these local stores, did not close during early afternoon. While their bakery offerings were meager, I did find a package of blueberries, a pastry of some sort, a bag of gummy bears, and some sort of nougat filled mound looking thingies that were full of sugar and coated in chocolate. Not exactly nutritious, but I wa a beyond being in the mood for healthy food. I ate all but the gummies and downed it with a bottle of Almdüdler, a sort of very strong ginger ale. Then I paid to use the public toilet which was nowhere near as clean as they claimed it would be (an attempt to justify the cost of peeing there) and left town.

Maybe a waterfall, but not the Partschens one

Looking down the Bahnhof street out of Naturns

Looking down at Meran from the top do the switchbacks

On the outskirts of Meran. If you aim a camera correctly you can make things look wild and remote.

By then things had actually warmed up. The loss in elevation helped as well. I was finally able to ditch the coat and then the extra thermal shirt as well. The long-awaited downhill finally hit as well including the switchbacks followed by the quick descent down into Meran. I was originally thinking I’d average 15mph or so on the way back. Hahahahahaha. Silly me. I didn’t even average 10mph. I stopped for too many pictures and wandered through too many towns looking for food or a bathroom or whatever took my fancy. Whereas I thought I’d get back around 2pm, I actually got back more like 5:30pm. I had considered riding over to the Castle Trautmannsdorf gardens, but by the time I unloaded my things and rode over there it would have been too close to their 7pm closing time. It turns out they also charge €15 to enter their gardens. No thanks. Instead I laid in the room and contemplated the day for awhile. Then I went to a burger place nearby and ordered a veggie burger. Word to the wise, apparently some people thing a veggie burger does not need a burger patty. This was nothing more than a €9 ripoff of a pile of sautéed veggies on a pile of salad. The fries were at least good.

One aspect I have not mentioned about the ride today, and the part, besides the headwind, cold, and rain for part of the ride, that really got to me was the sheer volume of traffic on the Radweg. I have never seen so many people on a path in my life. It’s not long-distance tourers. It’s mainly vacationers out for a little day trip and road bikers. Lots and lots of spandex-clad road bikers. No one warns you that they’re coming. You can be lost in thought and suddenly “whoosh” a peloton goes flying by. Or a group of e-bikers will appear out of nowhere. People stop in the middle of the path or they cut blind corners. You never know if you can go safely around a corner or not. The road bikers are the worst of the lot. They are probably trying to beta the top time in some Strava segment so they are not about to slow down to pass or use up the extra energy to earn that they are coming. It’s markedly different from my previous touring experiences where you can go for long periods without seeing much anyone, and if you do, it’s probably another cycle tourist headed the other direction. For someone like myself who treasures alone time in remote areas, this is not the place to vacation. I live the scenery, but once will be enough for me. I’m not sure yet where I’ll go next year, but it won’t be a touristed area. Maybe the Inn river or the Mozart Radweg. I’ve been in that area before and I know it is scenic and sufficiently remote.

Tomorrow I ride back ever so slightly downhill past Bozen and then ever so slightly back uphill to Brixen. Then the following day I have some uphill to contend with the St Lorenz outside of Bruneck where I’ll stay two nights to ride the Arhntal and then finally on to Toblach for 5 nights. I’m afraid I’ll find the Drei Zinnem, the Pragser Wildsee, and the Langen Weg der Dolomiten to be heavily touristed as well. I also have a ride up the Gsiesertal. Maybe that will be less touristed.

Today's ride: 42 miles (68 km)
Total: 348 miles (560 km)

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