Verbania, Italy
May 2007
We found a great spot in the mountains near Verbania (practically right on the border of Switzerland). We had a wonderful meal at "the" village restaurant (playing a game of translate this, and charades to acquire our meal), chilled out with the locals and just unwound after 6hrs of driving from Cinque Terre.
The next day we checked out a winter wonderland called Macunaga at the end of our road (literally as the mountain prevented further passage). We skipped off to Lake Maggorie and had some lunch before heading back to our mountain for a test ride. Both of us enjoyed the climbing and planned to spend the next day riding (weather permitting).
Unfortunately it rained pretty hard overnight and was still pouring when we woke. So the day was planned around a trip to some nearby villages and general sight seeing and planning the next stages of the journey.
Matt found 3 bike shops within the space of an hour, and after lot's of unsuccessful planning (other than to arrange 3 nights in Venice where we are now) Matt dragged us back to the bike shops for one more look.
On the way back to our accommodation in Bannio Anzino, we passed lots of people waving their arms and flashing lights. Eventually we learned that the road was closed and we assumed it was a rock slide from the rain. (We had also seen a 2 foot square boulder in the middle of the road the night we drove in!). Parking in a small town about 8km down the mountain, we learned that the road could be travelled on foot only, so we set off for the accommodation. That's when we happened upon an almighty hole where the road used to be (about the size of a car) with a free fall of about 200m to the ravine below!!!!! SHIT.
We high tailed back to (relatively) flat ground and booked a room for the night in a nearby town. We tried calling the accom but with no luck. When we woke this morning at the hotel, there was a phone message from our accommodation. They had rung around all the local hotels looking for us!
Today luck was on our side with the weather and a few more games of charades with the local carabineri helped us to find a mountain pass (foot track) that allowed us to venture back to our accommodation and retreive our belongings. We loaded the bikes and scadadalled out of there after 17km of goat trail and started driving straight to Venice at an average speed of about 140km/h. Our host told us, that he had driven home over the "hole in the road" about 20-30 mins before it collapsed! Incredible! And I dread to think where we would of been if Matt hadnt' dragged me back to one of the much talked about bike shops for one last sticky beak at all the cool gear, before we headed back to our accomm that evening. We arrived at the scene within an hour of the road collapsing!
