20 Col du Grand St-Bernard to Saint Vincent
688 m climbing
6h 51m elapsed
2nd August 2020, 27°C, sunny
71.61 km
4h 59m moving
47% off-road
Down
Today was the big descent... over 2500m total... plus almost 700m up.
High up I took the road part of the way although there is a steep cobbled path that would have been possible. After a km or so I then went off road cutting off some of the bends in the road.
Perhaps I should have stayed off road because just as I got into the tree line on the road I was coming around a corner and there was a car completely on the wrong side of the road coming straight towards me. It was an Italian Mercedes, with the entire family in, and I guess "dad" just wasn't paying attention (the good interpretation) or he was just a dangerous driver (the bad interpretation). Anyhow he swerved at the last minute and continued on not even slowing down to check. This just goes to remind me the reason for this trip is to avoid roads because car drivers are by far the biggest killers of cyclists.
Early morning view back up to the Col. I went through the galleries this morning, since the roads were empty.
I also took some off-road “shortcuts” following the walking route of the Via Francigena high up.
The Italian end of the tunnel under the Col.
Saint Rhemy is the first village down (quite a long way down).
The Italian side always seems to have multi-levels of transport infrastructure.
Even the official path is a bit overgrown in parts.
I took a completely different route from the official walking and cycling paths for much of the way down to Aosta.
Aosta
The old Roman town of Aosta is a pretty big stopping off point on the Via Francigena, but even in pandemic times it was crawling with tourists so I looped around very quickly pushing the bike down the main street and then took off.
Crowded pandemic crowds.
There was a river here 2000 years ago.
Along the Aosta valley
From Aosta I linked up with the official walking route again and after some km passed over to the official cycling route (this exists in Italy) around the village of Nus. The walking route goes up and down the North side of the valley quite a bit, whereas the cycle route sticks to the flatter ground on the South side of the valley.
The highlights of the valley are the castles. They're everywhere and so its difficult to believe that travellers in ancient times actually paid tolls to pass them... I can't see they'd have any money left to pay the portage over the col.
Stop for lunch, looking back west towards Aosta and the Mont Blanc massif.
More rockfall closures. This time at Quart castle, and despite seeing somebody walk through I took a detour on the roads.
Fenis castle.
Yet another rockfall. Though this one I went over, I couldn’t face the long detour.
The cycle route on the south side of the valley is very easy most of the way.
Overnight: Saint Vincent, Hotel alla Posta
It was getting extremely hot (well over 30) and humid by the time I got to Saint Vincent... the last cycle up the hill to get into town required a bit of effort for sure. Saint Vincent was a pleasant enough little spa town, perhaps a little too "spa" for my liking. Hotel was great however and I'd definitely stay here again.