This is the view from our hotel room balcony. From the moment we arrived, the bike room, the room, the view, the staff, the food…. Melodia Hotel, Alta Badia. As we were checking out, the manager came to see where we were riding today and asked to check our route for today and tomorrow. Today, we had originally planned to ride Sella Ronda minus most of the gear , pick the gear up and move on to our next night in Brunico. We started by heading down the valley 10 km, then deviating and climbing 6.
We were stopped in a small traffic jam as this helicopter brought in steel for work on the side of the hill. It started raining with about 14 km to go. We ended up in Brunico on a gravel cycle path. He was unimpressed. We found our hotel by the river. The male receptionist asked for us to bring our gear inside off the bike before showing where the bikes would go.
I explained the gear was wet and dirty, did he had an old towel we could place them on so as not to get his floor dirty. No, so in came the muddy gear. I try to treat these places like I would my own home but sometimes they do not care as I guess it is not their job to clean it. It rained for hours and we eventually went to the supermarket using their umbrellas for supplies, then headed out for some dinner.
A longer day tomorrow, with rain forecast, hopefully still later in the day. We arrived at our accomodation by The bike bags fitted nicely into our rooms and Tony got cracking on putting them together, outside. As we unpacked the bags, quickly there is stuff everywhere, and we have to carry it all in our bikes. It is very noisy in our room as there is a mini river outside out door, quite literally just half a metre from our door. I wandered around before breakfast to check the site out.
We are in a rural area some 14 km from Milan airport. Our accomodation is an Agriturismo accomodation place. Tony did a great job with the bikes. They were finished before we headed off to breakfast at 8 am. After breakfast we headed off to check out the surrounds leaving on a pot holed dirt road heading to the local village of Oleggio.
