Snow! In the Alps!??

Walking in the Sud Tirol series links: Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5

Monday 19th Sept 2011 - Sud Tirol walking day 1

The first proper day of my walking holiday in the Sud Tirol in Northern Italy; a strange mix of a region where 70% of the inhabitants speak German, 25% of them Austrian and 5% of them Ladin (a remote form of Italian/Latin). Consequently, despite being in Italy no-one speaks Italian.

I was stopping in St. Peter (See map and San Pietro here) which is a long way up the valley - the end of which is a dead-end bowl surrounded on three sides by Austria. The entire valley is bordered by the Alps, some of them peaking at over 3,200m (well over 10,000 feet.)

To put this into perspective, the recent walk I did up Helvellyn, the second highest mountain in England, peaked at a height of 950m (3,117 ft).

Of course for each of the walks I accomplished this week, 5 days, we were not starting from sea level so the actual elevation never approached anything remotely like these figures - but even so the altitude, the mountains, the sun and the snow all added to the sense of achievement and the glow of health we were rewarded with each day.

Today we arose to pretty foul weather just as it had been when we'd arrived late the evening before. It hadn't rained in the region for 5 weeks and we were blamed for bringing it with us. Each days walks and excursions (for the non-walking holidaymakers with us) had been swapped around to make the Dolomite & Venice daytrips occur further along in the week away from the bad weather, so todays walk was altered to a museum visit at the bottom of the valley in Brunico. (View previous map and look a little south.) I was gutted - I was here for a walking holiday and pouring rain wouldn't put me off but of course there were others to consider.

We took the coach down to Brunico and our walking guide, the excellent Kristina, showed us around albeit slightly out of her comfort zone I think. Whilst in the museum snow started to fall and she was shocked - it was far too early in the year for this to be happening!

After a couple of hours in the museum we stopped for a coffee and the weather started to clear a little so we headed off back to Brunico central and then started to walk north along the main road out of the town towards our hotel. It's about 20 miles away so we weren't planning to walk the whole distance (especially as it's only our first day and it was already 1pm) but we had a lovely walk in the damp mist and all started to get to know each other.

For the record there was 8 of us: Cindy and John, Jenny and Ron, Aveline, Nancy, myself and Kristina the guide. I was the youngest and was completely spoiled all week by people looking after me (lip balm, forgotten shampoo etc). Truly a great set of people and I was chuffed to bits with meeting and getting to know all of them. Thanks all xxx

I'd treated myself to a new camera for the holiday with having set myself a target of taking a photo good enough to be in next years holiday brochure at work. Like I said I took 250+ pictures over the 5 days but sadly I only think that about 15 of them are what I would term excellent pictures. Even so, fingers crossed I achieve my self-quest!

Over the next 5 blogs you'll see some of these and others besides.

[edit: 21/10/2011 - Hurrah! There's a new walking brochure going to the printers today and it includes FIVE of my pictures - including the front cover! I'm very pleased with myself.]

These mist covered mountains...

So what about Geocaching? Well given that I was on a guided walking holiday it was never going to be easy to bag any caches - I'd loaded the nearest 700 onto my GPS and then had to cross my fingers that we'd pass by some by accident. I wasn't desperate to get any although of course getting at least one would be nice as it would be my first in Italy.

My first day of photography

Well blow me down with a straw if not even a mile away from Brunico we didn't pass within a foot of one hidden under a bench on the main road! Not having to worry about there being Muggles in the group (they're hardly likely to return to the area!) I quickly found the cache and introduced them all to the hobby. I'd mentioned it to a couple already, to typical comments of derision, geekiness and feigned interest but once a cache was in hand I think a few of them found it quite exciting - if not particularly their cup of tea.

Everywhere you looked there was a photo waiting to be taken

Our route. We actually walked almost due North but I've rotated the map slightly to view the route better. (Also note that the snowline is entirely wrong on this Google image.)

Overall a great start to the week after a disappointing start - 7.2 miles on the flat to ease into things. Refreshed I retired to the shower, and then restaurant and bar, and looked forward to the rest of the week where, as it turns out, things would get even better...