Studying the maps to find a nice route into Austria meant looking for squiggles because squiggles means hairpins. Google maps wasn’t interested in the route I found on our detailed OsmAnd maps. We generally use Google maps as a check for traffic delays but it would not route us over the squiggles that I found. Timmelsjoch pass appeared to fit the bill though. It’s another high pass (2,509m), on the Italy-Austria border and driving from the south it’s very steep. This is clearly a less used pass. There were a few cars and bikers and one or two cyclists, impressing us as usual. At the top it was cold and had snowed in the last few hours. Unlike the popular passes, there’s very little at the top. There is a small exhibition about the construction of the road in recent times but the pass has been a route through the Alps for centuries , linking the Passeiertal and Ötztal valleys. There is one very nice small restaurant on the Austrian side of the top, with enticing apfel küchen and we were...
The drive over the Alps to the warmth of Italy was Plan B, if Plan A was affected by the weather. Almost two weeks ago the alpine weather was beginning to look dodgy, at least in western Austria. That’s why we executed ‘B’, went to Lago d’Iseo and promptly got battered by a six hour mega thunderstorm. At least the rest of the time in the lake area between Como and Garda was a sunny success and we really enjoyed the warmth, scenery, value for money and the lake waters. It was time for another plan; the route to Rotterdam and the best use of the time. The Tyrol had been a good couple of days and we liked the site at Prutz. So we hatched a plan to go there for at least two full days of high level walking and then make a reasonably speedy dash for the ferry. The alpine weather forecast for the last week of September seems to be good so why not? We head north, towards Trento and pick a route that appears to wiggle through the mountains of Lombardy and Trento. We actually pass many factories...