Rio d’Anterselva

We drove through the valleys most of the way today, fast smooth roads. How do they make the roads so good here? They have winter ice, snow, rain, frost and summer heat so much more extreme than we do in the UK, yet the road surfaces are pretty much perfect. We could certainly learn a thing or two about building roads from the people here. These aren’t even the motorways, our satnav is set to avoid motorways (I’m so glad we did seeing the motorways unbelievably high up above us on huge bridges spanning the valleys. ) We passed by Innsbruck and could see the ski jump ramp used in the Winter Olympics many years ago. Our journey took us back over into Italy, following the general direction of the motorway, but on a far less direct route. Much more pleasing to the eye even if a lot slower.

We knew that tonight’s parking place was unlikely to be ideal but with so little choice in the area we had to make the best of it. Parked close to a busy road it was very noisy but we hoped things would quieten down later on. Spoiler alert: it didn’t much!

Don’t get me wrong, any deaf person would have been over the moon with the surrounding scenery. There were mountains in the distance, different looking to previous ones we’d been amongst on the way here. These were on the northern edge of the Dolomites and much more jaggerdy ( is that even a word?)
There was an old stone bridge next to us that would have been part of the route before it was upgraded to the fast main road it is today. A lovely stream flowing under it and a cycle track next to that leading into the forest on the hillside beyond.
After a coffee we decided to take Bliss for a walk along the track leaving the noise of the traffic behind. It was quickly replaced by the songs of birds and the sound of flowing water . We left the track to allow Bliss to cool off. While watching her enjoying a cold dip in the stream I took a rest on a tree stump. On getting up I discovered I’d glued myself to said stump and now had gooey sticky tree sap on my bum, soaking through to my knickers and making me feel very uncomfortable indeed.
Continuing further the cycle track led to an abandoned campsite, with overgrown parking bays and an old empty swimming pool in the centre. It was peaceful here and a bit of a shame we couldn’t see a route to get us there in preference to the spot we had.
On returning to Ivy things on the noise front got worse, as in our absence a bunch of road workers had arrived and were setting up to do some maintenance in the road. So the next hour or so we had the added loveliness of a jack hammer to contend with. I thought they might be working right through the night, and we would have left in search of somewhere different if they hadn’t parked their trucks over the only exit. But luckily by about 9pm they were all done and left us with just the traffic noise to deal with, which now didn’t seem quite so bad. I was so tired and my ear plugs allowed me to sleep solidly through until morning.Read more