August 24, 2006
La Punt - Fuldera
I was up earlier than usual. While Barbara was still asleep, I re-crossed the bridge and walked up to the bike shop. My concern was, that in such a small place, in this mountainous region, I might have a problem finding 26' tyres with road treads. I had looked up the German words for tyres [Reifen] and tubes [Schläucher] before leaving the hotel. On entering the shop the clean, optimistic smell of new bike parts hit my nose. Herr Kesch [not his real name] himself, was wearing a blue bib and brace overall. In his fifties, he had a round, trustworthy face with a healthy mountain glow to it. I felt myself to be in good hands. My clumsy German construction, 'MTB tyres, but for the road' worked fine. He picked out two 26 x 1.25' road tyres and two tubes in no time. I paid up and strode back to the hotel, immensely relieved.
Before and during breakfast, what I saw as a small mystery was solved. I asked the proprietor's wife what the hyphen in Chaumes-ch was all about. By now we were speaking English. She went away for a moment and after apparently consulting a dictionary said, 'It's a hissing sound.' Balancing my cornflakes and orange juice, I began to twig. 'You mean a sibilant,' I said, 'That's what we say in English.' She was uncertain about this new word and so, on a piece of paper, as we took our seats at the breakfast table, wrote out the small list of Romanisch sibilant consonants. This was uncharted territory for me, but I like foreign languages, so I was more than prepared to listen. The upshot is, the s-ch in Chaumes-ch is pronounced as shch.
The lady sat down with us for a while and we talked for a while. She gave us two theories as to how Romanisch had come to be spoken in the area. I can't remember the detail so I would refer you to Wikipedia again. In any case these things are difficult to be sure of. I have heard that the reason, the Romanian language is the way it is, is because the local inhabitants, the Dacians, who fancied themselves a bit on the battlefiield, got their arses kicked by the Roman legions and so adopted their language by way of tribute.
She was particularly annoyed about people using anglicised shortcuts in German, it seemed. Eg. Wir haben zwei Kids. instead of Wir haben zwei Kinder. [We have two children or kids]. In reply to this, I said that where we live, language change is part of life. London's street accent/dialect has been transformed over the last 15 years, from what Dick van Dyke hilariously tried to mimic in the film Mary Poppins, to a mixture of Jamaican, home grown and occasional South Asian constructions, both the sound and slang is very different. Barbara quoted one of our favourite examples; the word long, as well as meaning of a substantial length, now also means boring or tedious. 'Have you done your IT homework?' 'No, man it's long.' Our hostess seemed little impressed by the direction our new metropolitan demotic was taking.
She also tried to persuade us to stay a little longer to take in some of the native wildlife above the valley. This was in response to our explaining our itinerary: over the Ofen Pass and therefore through the Parc Naziunal Svizzer to give it its Romanisch title. In essence, she said it's bleak and you can't see anything from the road. This turned out to be true. In any case we declined.
After breakfast, I set about changing the tyres and tubes in the hotel garage. Everything went fine until I tried to blow up the first tyre fitted with a new tube. It would not inflate. 'I don't f*cking believe this,' I said to myself, repeatedly. I went outside and explained my predicament to the hotel proprietor who left me for a moment, returning with a workshop pump, complete with pressure gauge and kindly pumped up all four of our tyres to their maximum.
We paid the bill, said our goodbyes and headed straight back up the road to Vélos Kesch for a new pump adaptor. We then turned back to the bridge over the Inn and the bike path to Zernez. This first stretch of cycle track was beautifully smooth tarmac. The sun was out again, we had a tail wind, the valley looked as Swiss as Swiss can be. Past the golf course at S-chanf, the path swung up and away from the road and turned to dirt. The further we travelled, the rockier the surface became. It was also hilly, as we climbed up the side of the valley. The advantage was the quiet. Parts of this section of the route were a challenge for us on loaded bikes. In places full-suspension MTB riders wouldn't feel too comfortable. I would recommend riders of standard, narrow-tyred touring bikes to take the road, which is flat, not too busy and smooth, new blacktop. Approaching Zernez, now descending quickly on a better surface, I missed the route sign and took the turning down to the valley road. I waited there for Barbara. There was no sign. I phoned her. She, riding more slowly had followed the route. After enduring a scathing comment or two about my navigating, I suggested we meet in the centre of Zernez. I rode off on the previously described main road. It was a treat. In Zernez, I sat on a bench by the railway station square. After 10 minutes or so , I set off to where the Route 6 track meets the Ofen Pass road. I found Barbara at the top of the town. It was about 1-30pm.
I had thought that after dragging herself up the Albula Pass the day before, that perhaps Barbara might appreciate an easy day. I suggested that we stay the night in Zernez and take a round trip on the Rhätische Bahn, back the way we'd come. I checked out the Station hotel, but they had no en-suite rooms, so Barbara declined. In fact, she was displaying more fortitude than I had anticipated and insisted we climb the Ofen Pass and stay the night in the Müstair valley. The snag was, that the weather was now looking a little threatening. To that end, we waited for the tourist office to open at 2pm. I went in and explained what we planned to do. I was given a hotels brochure and the woman behind the desk checked the weather forecast for the Ofen Pass on the office computer. 'If you're going, go now.' she said. I phoned the Gasthaus Staila in Fuldera. 'We're on bikes, we should be there about 6pm,' I said, 'But we could be later.' They seemed concerned about the possibility of a room being left vacant. 'If we have a problem I'll phone again.'
I bought lunch supplies from the supermarket across the road and we set off, up the Ofen pass road. The climbing started as soon as we were out of town. It was 21km to the top of the pass. I was worried. If yesterday's performance over the Albula was anything to go by, we might be descending in the dark and for that matter in the rain. It was colder now, but that was no problem as long as we were climbing. If I had paid closer attention to the map at the time I would have been less concerned. The road climbs for about 8km, then descends 200m over 5km to the mouth of the Livigno tunnel, before turning back uphill to the national park and the top of the pass. Altitude loss is usually aggravating, but this would save us time on the road.
We ate our late lunch at a picnic, table, marked private, near the Swiss customs post at the entrance to the tunnel. The border guards indicated we could use it. Up to now, although the sky was looking very unfriendly, we had had no rain. As we set off again for this last, long climb. It started to rain. We put on all our rain gear; a wise decision, because within five minutes it stopped. We continued climbing, in and out of the national park. A young guy passed us on an un-laden MTB. We exchanged greetings. We pressed on to the top. Barbara arrived and we took the usual pictures. I walked around for a minute or so and spoke to the lone rider. We shook hands. He was Eduardo from Milan, on holiday in St. Moritz. He had ridden from there and was planning on riding back that evening. He thought he might have to take the train from Zernez.
We set off downhill. My headset was still troubling me, the bends were tight, it was starting to get dark under the cloud cover and a few minutes into the descent it started to rain. The forecaster was spot on. Fuldera is about 10km from the summit. Nearer is another village, whose name I had not memorised from the map, nor in the descending gloom, had I been able to make it out on the road sign. Some way down the mountain I stopped outside the Hotel Staila. It was raining hard now. I went in and said I'd made a reservation. I was getting the hang of spelling my name in German. There was a bit of a wait while information was gathered and then, 'There's no reservation in that name.' 'Oh.' At first I thought they'd made a mistake. Then I thought I hadn't actually seen any sign of a sign bearing a name remotely resembling Fuldera. 'What's this village called?' I asked. The man behind the desk made a sound as though he was clearing his sinuses. 'Tschierv.' I humbly apologised and got back on the bike.
Tschierv is a very long village and I had just been overly keen to get out of the rain. We pressed on downhill, then at last, as the rain grew heavier, pulled off the main road into Fuldera and the Gasthaus Staila. It was past 7 o'clock. It fleetingly occurred to me that the name Staila must have some local significance.
We were directed to park our bikes in a downstairs room, which was festooned with hiking boots. Our room was in the roof, not overly large, but clean, comfortable, stylish with a proviso on the wood-carving and warm. We were not exactly glowing after our drop down the pass in the wet. We could now contentedly gaze out on the rain soaking the village. The sense of well-being this kind of situation can induce, is hard to exaggerate. It would have been even more pleasurable if we hadn't booked ahead, but just happened on the place. We both took long, hot showers and luxuriated in our cosy attic for a while, before going downstairs to eat.
The restaurant was moderately busy. The owners of those hiking boots were restoring themselves after the day's exertions. Our server was a tall woman with short grey hair, on the wrong side of sixty I would guess. She was wearing a dirndl. I found this slightly disconcerting, as though I'd been stuck in a tourist brochure. Nevertheless she was very friendly and helpful and the food turned out to be excellent. Home made soup, followed by a mixed meat shish kebab served with rice and vegetables. Not exactly typisch, but delicious just the same. We tried a bottle of Jenins wine from a vineyard close to those we passed through on our second day. That was equally good. Strangely, the wine came in a 50cl bottle.
After their meal some of our fellow guests, ordered bottles of beer, then took out packs of cards and played whist. I followed their lead with the beer. We had an early night.
Today's ride: 59 km (37 miles)
Total: 352 km (219 miles)
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