The Mighty Dolomites
The Italian Dolomites
The trip to the Dolomites, like the Coast to Coast, had been a long time in the making. The original plan was to head out in early June to bask in the young summer sunshine, but we had to cancel as Lydia, Esther’s mother, was still in the tumult of pancreatic cancer – so we set off in September, delayed but well prepared for perhaps more ‘robust’ weather.
Our adventure started as usual with a diversion to Sheffield, to drop off Inga and the car, both to the safe keep of our kids and to grab a cheeky lift to the train station - but only after a simple but delicious homemade lentil and chorizo stew. From Sheffield we alighted at Derby Train Station where, with my one pice of thorough planning, we walked the twenty minutes to Derby bus station to catch the East Midlands Airport Flyer, which promptly took off towards its first stop, Derby Train Station. Still, it’s always good to stretch one’s legs in-between journeys.
We arrived at the airport with just over two hours until to our early evening flight. I’d had visions of an empty airport, as who’d be flying of a Sunday evening? Well, lots of people apparently. The place was packed, but we passed through the security quickly enough, and settled down in the nearest bar to enjoy alcohol free beer at extortionate prices, before eventually heading to board Ryanair Flight FR6571 from Gate 19.
There are many reasons to detest flying with Ireland’s premier economy airline, but sitting in my mid-row seat, imprisoned in the garish yellow and grey interiors with 20 minutes until takeoff, I found reason No 1 - their choice of in-flight music. If you can call it that. Imagine a BTEC remix of a Stock, Aitken and Waterman 90s classic with a care home’s elevator playlist and you’ll get the idea.
Still, the flight landed early so how can I complain?
A €19, ten minute taxi ride later and we were at our canal-side room for the night, above a well reviewed restaurant which was closed, it being a Sunday and a national holiday. Oh well…
So having surmounted the glass staircase and enjoyed throwing the windows open on our room, we ventured out in search of our first meal on Italian soil.
Treviso is a beautiful and tranquil small town to the north of Venice, whose airport has provided the requisite location for any named Ryanair destination, as in being at least 40 minutes drive away from where it proclaims to take you. Hence Venice, Treviso on the flight tickets.
Its history dates back to its importance as a trading town in Roman times, predicting the rise of Venice and the doges. Full of canals and riverways fed not by mountain streams but from the inrushing tides of the Mediterranean.
Our first port of call was a lively and extremely busy eatery where we were told by a rather surly waiter that we’d have to wait for 20 minutes and that he couldn’t guarantee the table would be outside in the evening air rather than inside in the thumping tunes apparently popular with today’s youth.
So we opted to walk on.
Thank God we did. We found the Picola Osteria Papero Rosso (Small Red Pepper Osteria) which coincidentally was the first place I’d identified on my random Google Maps search. And what to find it was, a small cozy place run by a man and woman – he the chef, she the front of house – and both excelled in their roles. Having been told at first there were only tables inside, she and Esther quickly identified an outside table that was obviously not part of the evening‘s pre-booked arrangements, and so unexpectedly we ended up with the best seats in the house.
Your first meal in any foreign country always memorable and thankfully this one will be also - for all the right reasons.
Each of our three chosen courses were exemplary for their simplicity as much as for their deliciousness. Chichetti of Gorgonzola and honey, local Casatella cheese with a divine anchovy and another I can’t recall were eaten with smiles, oohs and aahhs.
The only bitterness being the regret that only Italians in Italy can conjure such delights. Or maybe it’s just Carlo, who runs our local Italian. Or maybe he’s not really Italian? He also says he played for Manchester City in the 1950s so he’s suspicious in many ways.
Anyhow, our secondi was a huge plate of delicious porchetta, local cheese and rich jam – each element divine, but together they moved beyond mere divinity. Tortellini with aubergine and tomato and a zucchini bogli (a local pasta akin to fat spaghetti) were capped with tiramisu, raspberry ricotta cakes and grappa. All for less than £88.
On the way back to our room, we found ourselves following floating, low slung tunes of jazz, to find a three-piece band playing in the nearby park. The ambience stayed with us until the church bell struck 10pm through our bedroom window and, having made the most of our Italian bed, we drifted to sleep.
We were only woken occasionally to be fair, by roadside noises, road sweepers, late night revellers, early morning cyclists and the intermittent nighttime bites from Treviso’s insect nightlife.
Bliss.
Locanda Ponte Dante, Treviso
Treviso to Pozzalle
We woke to the poetic chatter of the Italian working day - delivery men, road workers, early morning strollers, police sirens - we heard it all through the wide open windows. But with views of the Ponte Dante and the fast flowing river beneath acting as a stageset to the operatic cacophony, it was wondrously annoying.
Breakfast was from nine, served inside the ground floor restaurant by an Italian version of Carla from Cheers - attitude making up for a lack of style. Her scrambled eggs were similar, but the porchetta was plentiful and her coffee excellent.
At ten o’clock we walked the six minutes to the Plaza di Raphael to catch the bus to the outskirts of Treviso, to a large commercial shopping complex, in order to catch the Cortina Express Coach, linking Venice to the south with the Dolomites to the north.
The number three bus arrived a few minutes late and, having asked in my best Italian to purchase two single tickets with cash, we were promptly ushered on ‘gratis’ as the driver, being behind schedule, obviously couldn’t afford the time to explain to a couple of foreigners the intricacies of the Italian bus ticketing system.
On the bus we were joined by two young American women whose voices carried throughout the whole bus as they railed against the apparent inadequacies of their immediate superiors and work colleagues. As we alighted however, we realised that they too were heading in the same direction, so quickly established a rapport in order to share intelligence concerning the connection.
We needn’t have bothered.
When the Cortina Express arrived, the driver immediately asked if we had pre-book tickets. On my response in the negative, he gleefully (it seemed to me) informed us that the coach was full. Our two American companions were in the same boat. So having consulted both the UK and US version of Google Maps, we set off in another direction to try and find an alternative route north, having discovered that all tickets for the Cortina Express were sold out until 8:32pm – far later than any of us had planned.
Esther intuitively took the lead but then immediately passed over the responsibility to the two Americans who unsurprisingly oozed confidence. We dutifully followed under highway underpasses, through industrial estates, across grass verges and obscure subways, until finally succumbing to calling an Uber. We waited twenty minutes for the twelve minute and €30 ride back to Treviso train station – like the biblical dogs returning to their own vomit, we went back along the same route we had bussed out of town just two hours previous. To be fair, for €30 we traveled in style - a brand new Merc with an ultra stylish and smart Italian female driver, who poise and demeanor somehow justifying the hefty fee.
The train fare though was incredibly cheap at just £18 for two of us, so even accounting for the €20 contribution towards the taxi, it was still cheaper than the Cortina Express. So who’s gleeful now, huh?
The journey lasted an hour which gave us time to discover the careers of our two new American friends - one a waitress in a Brooklyn bar and the other employed by the National Indian Government of Washington state to help return stolen lands and rights to the people of the Lummi Tribal Nation. Two equally impressive careers.
From our train to bus and once more the search for a tabacchi to purchase tickets and so were directed by three elderly Italian gents up the road, more by gesture than by comprehension.
En route however, we stumbled across the bus we needed at a junction where the driver stopped, initially to let us cross, before ushering us onto the empty bus, again for free, with his warm smile and heavy right foot, delivering us just minutes later to the picturesque town of Pieve di Cadore, itself just a thirty minutes hike to our destination for the night, Pozzale.
We took the path less trodden, through barbed brambles, steep woods and nettled clearings, until we arrived at the mountainside hamlet, with our Airbnb being above the bakery, and, more critically, besides the bar. Having consumed two pints apiece of the very un-Italian Lagunitas IPA as well as a couple of toasted sandwiches, we returned to our quaint and ever so old-fashioned first floor apartment, for a game of scrabble, wine and disappointing cakes from the bakery below.
A heady start to our mountain adventures.
Newcastle 2 - Liverpool 3
Pozzale to Rifugio Antelao
We should have realised, when the Airbnb was clearly listed as being above a patisserie, that we’d be woken early to the noises of the bakers preparing for the day. So it was around four in the morning when we were both stirred from our slumber by various scrapes, bangs and chatter from below. We do have some form mind, having rented a house for a month back in 2006 to escape our home which was infested with builders as well as woodworm, that was also next to the then famous coke-fired Killer’s Bakery in Wirksworth. At least the bakers here at Pollazze were not keen whistlers.
So having stirred early and marvelled at the view from the living room window, we decided (or at least Esther decided for us) that we should set off early.
08:30 saw us packed and pulling the door to on our chintzy apartment, to buy peaches, pastries and plain yoghurt from the shop below and heading out on the first leg of our four day hike.
The route through the village took us past an impressive swallow laden church as well as a selection of fantastic black-and-white large format photos, celebrating village life and times gone by, when the locals looked like the proverbial peasants they probably were, living off the land through hard toil and harsher weather.
The route soon took us away from the road, which was really more a track for quad bikes or four-wheel-drive, and ascended through a delightful if decidedly steep woodland track. We paused often to take in the views as well as some air, and also to breakfast on the peach and yoghurt. This was done besides a ridiculously idyllic mountain retreat – a simple wooden shack with simply stunning views across the valley.
We walked for a few hours in this way, with butterflies and wild flowers to ponder, meeting a few people too, mostly Italians and quite a few families with surprisingly young children, which was as reassuring as it was cute.
Climbing to over 6,100 feet, the pathway started to descend before rising once more to take us up to the highest point of the days walk - the Chiesetta di San Dimisio with more spectacular views across to Monte Antelao.
From here we descended steeply to be greeted by the Rifugio Antelao, our base for the rest of the day and our bed for the night.
Cold beers, deck chairs and sunshine.
Not a bad introduction to the Dolomiti.
Rigufio Antelao to Rifugio Chiggiatta
Having dined on a thin Bolognaise and pasta, an unappealing but tasty fried sausage, grilled cheese and polenta, we retired to our shared dormitory at around 10pm, with the glow of the final nightcap of licorice grappa still warm in the throat. The room held 12 beds in 6 bunks and soon they were all filled, including three bunks filled with one of the families we had met on the way up, along with their worryingly very lively children. My panic was misplaced however as, after only 10 minutes or so of bedtime whispers, they fell asleep and were still blissfully silent the next morning at 6:30am when the sun burst through the windows – no one had thought to close the shutters.
At 8:00 we all gathered downstairs in anticipation of the morning's hearty breakfast, to be sadly disappointed with just flasks of coffee, plastic wrapped ‘toast’, and a selection of prepackaged jams and chocolate spreads on offer.
The views made up for it however as the morning mists were caressing the peaks with plumes of pink and subtle shades of swirling blues and greys.
Bags packed we set off promptly at 8:30am knowing our day ahead would no doubt be full and exhausting in equal measure.
Only 7.6 miles but with 2,700 ft of climb and mostly in the final 2 miles with Rifugio Chiggiato being perched on top of a 6,500ft mountain.
The first section was a steady climb through tree line pathways along the side of a mountain pass, part of the Monte Antelao massif. After an hour the path split, providing two options for our route around the first headland, which Esther explained to me as being the raven or the moose head routes.
Bemused I asked for an explanation only to be shown both routes on the map where sure enough, two clear blue outlines of a raven and moose’s head stood out as obvious nomenclatures. Komoot should take note.
The high peak of Monte Antelao loomed ahead with her sun kissed crests visible briefly in between the fast moving clouds. The path veered sharply to start its 3 mile descent, first through woodland before breaking onto the magical Antelao Meadow, still at 2,000ft, complete with bell laden cows, wild horses and mules and a further pleasant woodland pathway down to the wide glacial looking dried river bed. We crossed in anticipation of our lunchtime destination, a local eatery which soon filled with lots of locals and one in particular who arrived with his pet cat on his shoulder on a lead.
We lunched on gnocchi, pizza, cabbage, and mushrooms and finished off with a shared panacote with fruti di bosci, before we readied ourselves for the two hour climb ahead.
It was only 2 miles but with a 2,400 feet ascent, after a good four hours walk already, plus a heavier than planned lunch, with our backpacks… it was flagged as being an unending slog in the guidebook and it more than delivered on its description. It zigzagged and varied in its angle of ascent only from difficult to painful. Thankfully the midday sun started to haze over so at least we didn’t have the direct heat to deal with – but still, we paused every hundred metres of climb to make sure we didn’t arrive completely dead on our feet – just almost.
After two full hours of grunts and groans, we eventually saw the welcome grey roof line of our Rifugio come to view – obscured by the heavy rain which had replaced the midday sunshine and made the pathway just a little bit more treacherous and gave us another reason to feel even more sorry for ourselves.
The hostel is in a truly magnificent location, but being so isolated, with no vehicle access - not even quad bikes - and with the weather having turned, there were only four of us staying the night.
This did mean that we got our own dormitory, which almost made up for the lack of hot showers (a cold shower was offered for €6) and the slight lack of welcome. The three young men who greeted us (if you can greet someone without actually looking at them) seemed happy enough in their own company as they huddled to one side of the room beside the wood burning stove. Thankfully we were soon joined by a Flemish mother and daughter, Carmen and Annabella, who we had met on our way up through the wet woods below.
Carmen is a ballet teacher and Annabel a soon to be philosophy or psychology student - she had yet to decide.
Neither spoken Italian but being Flemish their English was better than ours and we soon started chatting and feeling at home, cocooned from the increasingly harsh weather outside.
Rifugio Chiggiata to Rifugio Ciarédo
After the evening meal we played cards with Carmen and Annabella, Annabella teaching us an Italian card game called Briscola which was a lot of fun, and ended in a suitably magnanimous a-game-a-piece drawer.
We retired to our own dormitory just after 9:30pm to enjoy an hour's reading only for the lights to be turned off at 10 o’clock.
In the morning we were greeted by an excellent breakfast (eggs, yoghurt, toast) and excellent if cloud strewn views across the mountain ranges. I was even able to make out a view of Rifugio Antelao and trace our path of the previous day, around the mountain passes and through the meadow, before the pathway disappeared into the descending woodland.
We set off for Rifugio Baion, half way to our final destination, a little later than planned at 9:30am but we’re confident we’d arrive in time for lunch, to shelter from the predicted midday storm.
Esther‘s Cicerone guide warned the route included a section of Level 3 whereas my Komoot App flagged it ominously as potentially dangerous, so, as we approached, not quite knowing what we were in for, my imagination started playing its mind games with my resolve, as well as my stomach. I had imagined a Via Ferrata (iron path) to be simply a narrow pathway with a steep, possibly sheer drop to one side, but that the steel rope was there more as a reassurance, something to hold onto to calm one’s nerves… So as we turned the corner and caught our first sight of the steel rope running vertically up a rock face for perhaps 5 meters, before disappearing around a rocky outcrop, I was momentarily confused. Until that is it dawned on me that it was inviting us, daring us to climb.
At this point, the small framed photograph of the young Italian woman, surrounded by candles and flowers we passed just minutes before made sense.
Going ahead of Esther, trying to show a level of calm that wasn’t really there, I grabbed the steel rope and heaved myself up, one lunge at a time, taking my full weight as well as my backpack in my grip whilst seeking footholds in the rockface sufficient to use my legs as well as my arms. As the rope levelled out, the drop below seemed to magnify and so the 10 or 15 meter steep scree below felt more like a 200 meter sheer crevasse.
Esther followed, cursed the man whose placement of the pegs heights and distances took no account of the female frame.
It was probably no more than a 20 metre stretch of Via Ferrata. My Komoot app’s red highlighted pathway showed 450m. There was more to come.
In fact there were three more sections, but in truth none worse than the first - not in the fear factor at any rate - maybe we were getting used to it? As we descended the final section, once more a vertical line but this time in backwards descent, I made the foolish error of telling Esther to watch where she was putting her back foot, having slipped myself. I should have of course been more considerate and not proffered said advice as she was in the throes of clinging on for dear life with the last thing needed such obvious and condescending guidance.
Still, it’s always good to be taken out of one's comfort zone.
We were later told that had we fallen our insurance would be invalid, as to use the Via Ferrata you should be equipped with harnesses, carabiners and helmets. Next time…
The last stretch towards Rifugio Baion was thankfully a simple woodland path punctuated with brief mountain views but mainly panoramas of cloud and mist.
It was set beside an old cattle barn which you had to walk through to get to the entrance. The farm’s cattle were grazing in nearby fields by the sound of the melodic bells.
Inside the refuge, the welcome was as warm as the large fireplace and we settled into our table for two, to weather the worst of the storm which had just punctually arrived, and to enjoy a delicious soup, hearty polenta and sausage and yet more Panacot, all washed down with beer of course and crowned with yet more grappa.
The storm showed no sign of easing off and yet we knew we'd have an hour’s walk at least ahead of us. So reluctantly we slowly donned our waterproofs, bid our farewells and set off into the rains – not before leaving money behind the bar to greet Carmen and Annabella with a drink on their arrival.
The rain eased off but we were still forced to backtrack on our route through the woods as the pathways were treacherous with raging rivulets of rainwater, crashing down the rutted pathway, making ascent difficult and descent comical. So we veered back to take the road and, after an hour and a bit, whose highlight was passing a procession of Italian cows going somewhere with purposeful grace, we finally arrived at the Rifugio in the clouds Ciarédo.
