The morning started with an easy 25 miles following the river down to Trento, another Change of scenery as the river was enclosed by steep cliffs of what I would guess was limestone, the orchards started to become interspersed with vineyards, and the track was pretty flat Tarmac the whole way.
We found a great wee place for lunch on the edge of an industrial estate just before Trento, it was obviously very popular with the local workers and served great grub at very reasonable prices. The quality of the food has definitely improved now that we are into Italy. We were a wee bit concerned about the afternoon section as we were leaving the main cycle route and heading into the hills to the east of Trento and the maps we have of this part of the route are pretty duff.
Luckily enough we got chatting to a German couple at lunch who were cycling the same way, they were armed with the Bikeline guide (which I hadn't bought because it was only in German), printouts of all the tricky bits through Trento and the whole route downloaded onto their GPS. I really felt a bit inadequate! However, having had a squint at their top notch maps and making a few notes on the freebie hand out we had got from the last campsite I was fairly confident that with the aid of our trusty smart phone (mark 2) we would find the way. Then our German friends took pity on us and offered to guide us through the worst parts of Trento. Result!
you can see what's coming can't you? In the centre of Trento we picked up a fifth tourer, a solo German girl who was even more clueless than us, then got totally lost.
We kept ending up below the same railway bridge, our guide then discovered that his guide book had suggested getting the train for the next few kilometres and his GPS was expecting us to be on the bloody train! After consulting with a local we all ended up shoving up a hill through some park and some really steep inclines to eventually get to a village on top of a hill. The wrong hill! Back down again and eventually onto the right road which we climbed up for about another half hour before coming to a "road closed" sign, fortunately none of the Germans knew what road closed meant in Italian so we carried on and were lucky enough to get through
After that the going was fairly straight forward and we have ended up in the really nice resort of Caldonazzo on the shores of the lake.
Despite our traumas it was great fun and we a re really sorry that we didn't exchange contact details with our guides. ( although I'm sure he wishes he had never offered his services)
Miles today 50
miles total 1050.25
Today's ascent 1995 feet
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