adidas Transalp Challenge
Sausages and Pizza
Pete Webb and Sauze Holliday - Sponsored by Fat Face and Rocky Mountain Bikes / 19.08.2004
I was trying to describe this day to a friend who called me that evening from Brighton. I said today we cycled from London to Brighton climbing a 1000m as we left London, then once in Brighton we cycled up Ben Nevis and back down. That’s how it felt!
I’d been told it was a lovely ride slowly climbing towards Italy, and it was. The first climb took us up through a valley where the biggest obstacles were cows; at one point it was a huge pool of cow shit that had to be crossed. After another great downhill we moved into Italy. This whole region, which changed hands between the Austrians, Swiss and Italians during the First World War, hardly changes as you move between the borders here. Once in Italy they still spoke German, the villages looked the same, and at the finish line they were serving those huge sausages! Where’s my pizza! Another nice touch to the event is that we get to use the local swimming pools, and in Naturns the pool was fantastic with water massage jets and Jacuzzi pools. That evening on the way back from the pasta party I found a gelateria where I indulged in Ice cream.
Day 5
The fifth day was our ‘short but picturesque’ day, and started as ever with a large climb up side of the mountain before dropping back into the sweltering valley/ Today we had tech downhill’s which I had a great amount of fun on, I enjoyed the big long flight of ancient stone steps, and the switchbacks. Here we had to pull one of the Irish competitors out the bushes, he had ridden off the edge and disappeared down into the undergrowth. The road climb up the other side was HOT, most days were quite hot and it was the altitude that normally cooled conditions, once back in the valleys it was sweltering. The ride into the early finish was great fun, whizzing through the vinyards, more tech downhill, then flying down footpaths and through parks, finally ending up in the middle of town. Today I got my Pizza.
[To be continued]
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