Day 14: Turin to Baveno, 260km

Day 14: Turin to Baveno, 260km.

Two weeks in, and the best day so far!  In terms of trails, at least - the variety, complexity, amount.  The section near Monte Barro was some of the best trail I've ever ridden.

End Result Up Front: This is Where I'm Typing This From!

Day started with a self-imposed 25km road-jaunt to get me from Turin back to the route itself around Foglizzo.  Trails started almost immediately, with some easy going gravel to get me back in the zone.  Spent time skirting fields and quite a few canals, bringing in water for both hydro-power and irrigation.  Even got a bit muddy, after the rains last night, while dodging showers themselves until lunch.  Can only recall a couple of road link sections, and then only 10-15 km max.

Started Off Easily

Hang about: are these women with skimpy clothes on prostitutes?  Saw 6 or 7, at the side of roads in what appeared to be the middle of the country side.

Then as the woods closed in, there was a great patch of overgrown trail turning in to proper "single-track" (or as close as it gets on legal trails) with one of two properly technical sections up a steep 80m hill sprinkled with large smooth rocks.  I've marked these bits up for Alessandro, in a manner I started about mid-way through France, even if it is legal to show the more technical or interesting bits so that nervous riders of bigger bikes can plan ahead!

Getting a Bit Trickier... I swear those pebbles on the left were boulders.  Steep too.

Speaking of edits, there were quite a few no-entry signs on the way, all of them marked for updates.  It was quite funny following the GPX in places.  You could tell it was from someone on the ground, rather than a map recce, and a handful of times I ended up repeating the same mistakes: shooting off down the "obvious" looking turn, only to realise 100m later and spin around, then look on the GPS track to see a little blue spur where the recce rider had done the exact same thing.  There was one bit near Santhia, where I stopped for lunch, that needs cleaning up properly - the recce person clearly spent ages trying to find a way through, but it's left a spider's web of tracks on the route, and it isn't clear which on to follow leading to some frustrating dead ends.

And that is an absolute precipice.  Photo doesn't show clearly, but it's 30' down to the river on the left, the tape is marking off path that's under cut by subsidence, stand on those twigs and you'd fall through, and there's a foot deep run off gulley to snare you.  I footed this bit!

But reassuringly, most of the good fun bits were like this

The first time I got stopped was in a nature reserve skirting a canal by a warden.  I explained in my best Englitalian that I was following a route, that it was all John and Alessandro's fault, and that Mike at Adventure Spec would happily pay the fine.  Joking.  In fact, we had a very friendly conversation.  I genuinely hadn't seen a sign, and looking back the one facing the other way was microscopic.  He admired the bike, then explained about the Lame del Sesia reserve and gave me a map (copy to linesman) with the no-entry places marked.

Breathtaking

The second I was bang-to-rights.  I'd seen the sign, saying "no entry" except for a very long list of exceptions including residents, access, farmers, 4x4 drivers with a permit and more.  I decided the chance of being found out as not one of the above was slim, so pressed on - after all, it was on the route...

Then I came across two MTB riders, one who had broken his chain.  While trying to fix that, a local strolled up to see what was going on.  He told me I couldn't ride here, and I immediately agreed to spin around - I wasn't going to argue, first, he was more than probably right; second, I was thinking about the TET-ters who might follow, and how we don't want a bad reputation; third, it was only 3km round on the road anyway.

Farcically though, when we'd given up on the broken bike, he wouldn't let me forwards 10 feet to spin around.  I realise he thought I'd just zoom off, and I thought afterwards I should have given him my helmet as proof, but instead we ended up in a stupid stand-off that ended with me doing a 472 point Austin-Powers-style turn where I stood.

Lunch in a trolley park, hiding from the rain

None of that matters now though: I arrived to the view over Lake Maggiore and was stunned.  News to no-one, I suppose, but the Italian lakes are beautiful.  And my campsite is right on the shore.  What a contrast to lunch, which was some lovely bread and cheese, but eaten in the shelter of a supermarket trolley-park to dodge the starting drizzle.

First View over Lake Maggiore

The rain didn't let up for another 3-4 hours, and it made some of the snottier tracks even more interesting to ride.  For the first time since Montlucon, I was very glad I had proper tyres on and not dual sport tread.  But even the rain couldn't detract from the quality of the route.  Bravo Alessandro!

NB: Functionality disabled to prevent extracting KML. If you want to follow the route, get the latest data from TransEuroTrail.org

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