The Bicycle Adventure Club - Come Ride With Us!

Val Venosta to Venice

June 5th to June 21st

Ride Director: Randy Glover
Ride Co-Director: Lucy Glover
Ride Driver: Greg Norman
Report by: Mary Lou Engert

This ride has been done a number of times and has been deservingly very popular for its location and leadership. It started in Munich, Germany with a couple of sightseeing days and then headed for the top of the Alps via motor coach pulling a trailer filled with bikes. We had a nice informal way to begin to get to know each other while traveling. We were quite impressed with our driver, Bobby, having supreme skill handling the bus with a big trailer behind through winding, narrow and steep roads on our way through the Alps to the Italian/Austrian border. We got on our bikes in Val Venosta and twenty four riders including our leaders, Randy and Lucy Glover, then had a short, and, at times misty ride along an alpine lake near the borders of Italy, Austria and Switzerland to the small town of Burgeis Italy.

We spent two nights at a lovely hotel in Burgeis, which allowed for both hiking exploration, and, for those not deterred by intermittent rain, a number of bicycling options. The scene was classic Alpine, complete with chickens and goats and the occasional small herd of big eyed, mild mannered cows that stayed in town at night and were lead out to nearby fields in the mornings.

Then on a beautiful blue sky day we rode almost entirely downhill in utterly enchanting scenery to our next outstanding hotel in Merano. This is a substantially bigger town, enough so to show up on Italian maps, also quite German in character, and beautifully situated on the river Passer/Torrente Passirio with a bike path alongside the river which several cyclists rode up during our two night stay. A handful of vigorous people rode up to a high pass that was above Meran/Merano. We noted that the cities, towns and other landmarks in this area of Italy usually have a German name and an Italian name due to borders being moved in the wake of WWI. Our initial days were in places with predominant German character and once we reached Lake Garda we experienced more Italian character.

We went next via Bolzano for a quick tour of the museum housing Ötzi, the 5000 year old Iceman found in the Alps in 1991. His naturally embalmed body and artifacts like clothing and tools were analyzed and displayed in this very interesting museum. Then we were off to Tramin, an area that is famous for its Gewurztraminer wine. We spent a night in Trento (think Council of Trent). Our last two-night stay was on the shore of Lake Garda in a lovely hotel with large gardens and several swimming pools. We had several more nights along Lake Garda followed by nights in Verona, Vicenza and Padua before our final destination in Venice. In Padua several of us had a tour of Padua University which dates back to the 1200s and is where Galileo was a professor for 18 years and William Harvey was a student and did dissections leading to his discovery of how blood circulates in the human body. The first woman to attain a doctoral degree in a university had been a student here. The original dissection theater is still intact and we got to learn about it and enter it during our tour.

We finished the tour with a day of sightseeing after riding to Venice from Padua along a dike, then via ferries and short hops on islands as we neared Venice.

This was a trip with lots of scenic variety, lots of interesting history, amazing art work, great food and pleasant traveling companions. Thanks to the Glovers for a memorable bike ride and exploration of Northern Italy