We came down the west/south side of the Stelvio and into Bormio. There was no time to stop as we wanted to get to our chosen Italian lake. It was still a fair drive (in our 110) and we soon started to think about maybe pulling in somewhere unofficial.
Park4night has a location “up there” and maybe it’ll be suitable or maybe there’ll be others there already.
We are following the route to lake Iseo using our normal OsmAnd map on the iPad but Google maps instructs us to travel two sides of a triangle, rather than follow the hypotenuse.
The overnight spot requires us to follow the H and so we head up what turns out to be another pass, only this time it’s more ‘local’. It’s certainly narrow, fairly steep and has sufficient hairpins to frustrate us as we’ve done enough today.
Near the top the road is much less steep and there’s a wide flat area just under the hill of the last few bends to the summit. There, along a track of 150 m, we see a building and the notice on the roadside says it’s a Refugio and that it’s open. There’s a car and lots of space. This isn’t the Park4night spot which is somewhere over the top, going down the other side.
We hesitate, what’s the Italian for “can we sleep outside please”? and “we will buy a meal and a drink”. We don’t know the answer as Google Translate needs a data signal.
We take the plunge, drive in and we’re there now and what looks to be a family appear and I get out and approach them, all smiley.
Dawn’s Duolingo German won’t help and so that essential learnt sentence, mein Kaninchen ist faul will be saved for yet another day.
It’s amazing how gestures bridge the language barrier and from their Italian motions I understand that “yes of course you can park here and sleep. It’s really no trouble”.
My gestures aren’t so good and the offers to pay, to buy a meal or something to drink are met with blank looks.
I try to fire up Google translate again but there’s no data. They then tell me to use whiff-eee and I click my phone and they select it for me and suddenly we are communicating.
Mrs Refugio dictates and g-translate tells me that they aren’t open (in spite of the sign) and that they are just about to leave for home in the valley and won’t be back until the weekend.
So it’s all arranged. The farmer seems to know what’s happening too and the cows are right next to us waiting to be milked, judging by the noise they are making.
So we park, they do some jobs, their 11year old checks over the Landy and brings us a sticker.
Next door is a big barn in excellent EU funded condition.
Two old time farmers are busy with some diary cattle. They put six in a trailer and one drives away and the other brings-in the final six, waiting patiently to be milked, their cowbells deafening us.
It’s about an hour later when they are released but don’t want to leave, as they are too interested in us.
So the deafening cowbells continue until the farmer realises and gives them some encouragement to get going. This is by shouting a lot, some prodding of stick and they turn and very slowly walk up the hillside and into the trees.
There’s an electric tape holding them away from the road but their ground extends away up onto the ridge. Very slowly the sound of the bells diminishes until finally it’s quiet.
The remaining farmer finishes his tasks, calls something to us, probably “see you at 6 in the morning”, climbs wearily into his car and he’s gone too and it’s quiet.
Really quiet. 1,852m above sea level quiet.
The mountains to our west go into sunset silhouette and it’s beautiful.
Oh and they left the whiff-eee on!
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