Who would have thought it – we spend another night in “our” vineyard. In the meantime, everyone has made friends with the place and we already feel really comfortable. As the end of the day after our fantastic hike in the Dolomites (crossing Latemarscharte) we treat ourselves to a refreshing textile-free bath in the river and a dinner in the restaurant.
The golden-robed landlady says goodbye to us the next morning after the morning coffee with the words “Joa, müsst`s was abbüssen” (Do you have to pay for something?), when she hears about our bike plans. We don’t have to pay anything! The weather is wonderful, our bikes heavy but well packed and the South Tyrolean bike paths are 1st class. Mostly it goes along the rivers, rarely do we have to share the path with cars. We are rarely overtaken and when then by racing cyclists or E-bikers. The kilometers fly by and soon we are in Brixen. We aim for a distance of 60 to 70 km per riding day. We reach this goal relatively easily; however, the heat and the constant ups and downs get to us a bit.
We are compensated by all sorts of things: the changing landscape, the surprisingly beautiful places to stay overnight, the countless salted nuts, the refreshing baths in the wild rivers, the cozy, home-cooked dinners, the starry skies in the evening and the incredible satisfaction of coming so far under our own steam.
Already we leave Italy and find ourselves a shelter to face the approaching thunderstorm. We survive the night surprisingly dry and the passer-byers, who from now on greet us with a friendly “Servus”, don’t seem to be bothered by us, but instead wish us good luck for the rest of our journey. The journey continues through the Tyrolean Bullerbü, also known as Carinthia or Gailtal. The sky remains cloudy, again and again we drive in the pouring rain. More thunderstorms are forecast for the night and so we try to find another sheltered place to spend the night. Not so easy. The first farmer’s wife, whom we ask for a place in her barn, laughingly waves us off with the words “In dem Stoble wollts schlofn? Do konnst ned schlofn!” (“Sleep in the stall? You cant sleep in the stall!”) Somewhat discouraged, we continue to drive and search. All open barns are crammed with agricultural equipment and in the small villages it is almost impossible to settle down inconspicuously. Finally we pulled up the courage and ask the youth coach at the Kirchbach soccer club for asylum. Bull’s eye. The friendly Stefan offers us a shower, a beer and we settle down in a sheltered corner in front of the clubhouse. Freshly showered and with full stomachs, we watch the thunderstorm as it rolls towards us, flashing and dark, over the mountains. The first drops fall and two minutes later we realize that our place is not protected at all. Thank God we have not yet settled in for the night. We hastily put on our rain gear and we are whipped thoroughly by nasty gale force winds and horizontal rain and hail. Unreal. In the meantime it is dark and we can only make each other out in the flash of the lighting. Within seconds we are all soaked to the skin, everything that we had not previously stowed in the waterproof bike bags is wet and our place is flooded. After ten minutes the worst of it is over and we are in shock and we start to realize what just happened. Fortunately, our sleeping bags stayed dry and everyone still has a dry layer of clothes for the night. We pitch our tent next to the reserves bench with a side protect us from the weather. Listening to the thunderstorm in the distance and rain pattering on the roof we sleep amazingly well.