San Valentino alla Muta

Sat, 26th July, 2014:

Last night, there was a huge storm. It started at around 04:30 at which point I had to do the rounds of closing all the windows & skylights, and place the drip-collection bucket. By 10:30, it was just beginning to ease off bucketing it down, though the lightning & thunder carried-on a while longer. We left Lazise with the intention of driving back up to Heiterwang, in Austria.

With one thing and another, it got quite late when we actually left, and I needed to empty the contents of my bank account into the fuel tank. We’d seen a relatively inexpensive petrol station on the road from Peschiera del Garda – about 10 mins drive away – and decided it would be worth the drive to save on the fuel (which is very expensive in Italy). We pretty soon realized that the traffic was really heavy around the lake. Then came the dawning realisation: It’s Saturday: change-over day for most holiday-makers.

Fuel bought, then back the way we’d come, hit the main road and came to an immediate stop. 20 million holiday-makers all trying to head back to the Autostrada leading back up to the Brenner Pass. Sense of humour failure rapidly followed. After we got moving, we decided to take the back roads – seldom a good option in Italy as anything that’s not a motorway doesn’t have any tolls and is therefore not fit to be driven-on: I’m sure I’ll need new shock absorbers when we get back.

Long story short; we took the main road all the way up to Bolzano, running in parallel with the Autostrada. Sometimes we were stopped; sometimes the Autostrada was stopped. We then decided not to go over the Brenner Pass, but instead to head West from Bolzano, through Merano, and along the “Weinstrasse” (this part of Italy is mainly German-speaking) and over the Rescia Pass. We’re presently at 1450 metres above sea level in San Valentino alla Muta. A spot high up in the mountains between two lakes, that’s as cold as it is beautiful. And it’s raining.