The ride to our next stop, Roncegno – home of our accommodation at the Azienda Agricola and Agritur Montibeller – was looking long, windy and steep. So it was that AW took it upon himself to amend the long factor by selecting an alternative route, that, while a tad steeper, was significantly less long (approximately 22 kilometres less long). This stroke of genius would have been precisely that, had it been a route (like the one JM had carefully researched and selected) along a bicycle path, rather than a weekend rally-car super-highway. And so it was that long, windy and steep became harrowing, still-quite-long, windy and steep. Whoops. Sorry JM. AW, back to your primary function of ordering caffe and brioche!

How steep? I hear you ask. For the sake of comparison: “…the Jura’s Mont du Chat is something special. The only climb in this year’s Tour with a double-digit average gradient (10.5%), it literally never lets up. With nowhere to recover and pitches of 14 and 15% between kilometres 4 and 5 the climb is simply a beast.” (Whit Yost, The 10 Toughest Climbs of the 2017 Tour de France). Pfft. Check this:

And so we made it to Roncegno around 5:00, and set up our lonely tent. When your campsite looks like this one, you know one of two things – either the high season has ended or you’re staying somewhere nobody wants to stay.

Hoping the former was the case, we set out for a pre-dinner stroll. Concerns about the latter grew upon meeting someone who appeared to be the sole inhabitant of the town – an in-patient of Terme di Montecani (according to the website a retreat for those suffering “…anxiety, stress and depression…”). She was wandering listlessly through the gardens, wearing a patchwork cardigan, fisherman’s pants, and Birkenstocks and socks. She greeted us with a peculiar mix of (misplaced) glee and (reasonable) bemusement. Ok, sure, no problem. And then the town itself was dead, nothing open, bar one bar (as it happened…). Oh, and we saw a black cat, a rainbow (?) and this…

We scurried back to our hosts at Azienda Agricola and Agritur Montibeller where a big old home-cooked meal awaited us. That was nice, and normal…kind of. And then we slept…kind of. Sheesh, once we’d overcome the imposter syndrome from our stay at Borghetto, I think we were easing in to that style of accommodation. The reality of camping brought us crashing back to earth (literally). But we overcame…kind of. Anyway, we’d decided to go for a nice leisurely ride around the area tomorrow, so a light sleep would be sufficient. Right? Kind of.