St. Ulrich to Trieste, Day 12 - Gemona to Nimis

Thursday July 2, Gemona to Nimis, a day of unplanned backtracking and rerouting

Ah, coolth! Or at least, ah, not mid-90s anymore!

We began our day by heading up the hill to see Gemona's old city center. 

The main draw there for us was the Duomo di Santa Maria Assunta. A 7-meter tall statue of St. Christopher, patron saint of travelers, looms by the front doors. It was built from six blocks of sandstone by Giovanni Griglio in 1331-32. Pilgrims on the Romea Strata must have appreciated the colossal spiritual nod.

As with most cathedrals in these here parts, there's evidence of pre-Christian, early Christian, and medieval structures that preceded the current building, a renovation that was begun in 1291 and consecrated in 1337. The Romanesque scene above the main entrance dates from the late 12th-early 13th century and depicts judgment day. Gemona's tourism website says all of the cathedral's exterior sculptures were once similarly colorful.

A mermaid flexes her provocative tail at St. Christopher's feet, representing the whores who were sent to him in prison, and whose wiles he of course resisted. Tsk, women. 

Inside, an angel rides a dolphin across a baptismal font. The basin is from a Roman monument dating from the 1st or 2nd c. CE; it was repurposed as a font around 1000 CE, with baptismal carvings added to both ends in the 11th to 12th centuries.

The epicenter of the May 1976 earthquake was near Gemona, and the cathedral suffered significant damage. Rebuilt stone by stone, it has been structurally reinforced to protect it from future damage. An earthquake-damaged crucifix is now the focus of a memorial to the event, symbolizing both damage and recovery.

On to hiking! Here, a view of Gemona's ancient public laundry along the city wall below the church and castle.

The plan for the day was to seize one of the last opportunities for elevation gain and to hike over two foothills between Gemona and Nimis. Up, up, up through the woods we went--until overgrown trails forced us back down on the only passable trail we could find.

This is not the overgrown part

We emerged from the woods after 3 miles of hiking...

...and were disappointed to see Gemona just a stone's throw away. Indeed, we hadn't even left town yet.

We decided to stick to roads until our next opportunity to tackle a ridge, where we hoped the trail would be better maintained. Up, up, up the windy road we went to San Giorgio, where we paused for lunch in the shady portico of the new church (the old one having been destroyed in 1976). We then headed to the trailhead below Mt. Campeone.

The trail followed a lovely creek for a mile, then rapidly became overgrown and then repeatedly blocked by fallen trees. A small metal sign enthusiastically said the trail was being repaired for all users!--but the fallen trees and brambles made it so slow and difficult for us to navigate, we decided we should backtrack to San Giorgio and stick to the roads if we wanted to reach Nimis before nightfall.

On our way back through San Giorgio, we thought perhaps a pretty side road that aimed steeply downhill would get us back to the main road...

...but it dead-ended in brambles behind an orchard, so back up we climbed.

We were now back in St. Giorgio for the third time. A three-wheel mini pickup truck zipped past us. By this point we were 8.5 miles into our day's hike and barely 3 miles from Gemona.

Down, down, down he main road we went, past bees...

...and accompanied by cicadas. Turn your audio on to hear them.

We passed several names painted on the road. S guessed that the women's Giro d'Italia had gone up this hill. We later learned that both the women's and men's races had come through Friuli to honor the 50th anniversary of the 1976 earthquakes, but none of the cyclists was named Ilenia, and "mandi" simply means "hello." Perhaps this was a greeting for Ilenia Lazzaro, a former professional cyclist who is now a prominent sports journalist.  

We descended to Artegna--and would you look at that! We were now a good 3.4 miles from Gemona. I found this far more amusing than S did...

We did not bother climbing this hill in Artegna to see the inside of this 19th-c. Valhalla-ish church.

Evidence!

We continued on through towns and fields toward Tarcento, where we figured out that our new stick-to-the-roads route had us heading to a freeway. With 14 miles already behind us and rush hour in high gear, we decided it would be safer to ride a bus the rest of the way to Nimis than to get hit by one on the freeway.

From the bus stop in Nimis, we made our way to beautiful Agriturismo Bressani, our accommodation for the night.

Ruh roh

On our way to a neighboring Agritourismo for dinner, we passed this very tiny car. Dinner included grilled radicchio, "frico" (potato-onion-cheese patties), and the lesson that we needed to learn how not to order both a first and second course just because a server expected us to.

Ta da! Almost 14 of the day's 15 miles, 2,025' up, 1,900' down.

Change in plans

Well wouldja get a look at this guy? This was last Wednesday, outside the Krankenhaus in Weilheim, where the ambulance took him a week ago Monday after he crashed his bike in a ditch avoiding a head on collision with a driver who was on the wrong side of the road. There's no road rash on him this time, because all of the impact energy went into breaking his right femoral head. One 24 cm pin, a few screws, and two days later, he was getting around with this snazzy Lamborghini. No visitors were allowed because of Covid restrictions, but patients could come outside to smoke cigarettes, so we visited in the designated smoking area. He came home last Thursday, with a few months of PT and recovery ahead of him. This definitely puts a dent in sabbatical plans, but he's going to be OK. Do not try this at home.

On the bright side, I can spend at least the next several months not worrying about him having another bike wreck.

Photo below shows Stefan and his niece Hanna tromping across a field outside of Widdersberg yesterday. Stefan is experimenting with a cane-crutch combo, so Hanna is holding the other crutch. I was walking with two hiking poles, and we were all walking at Stefan's snail's pace. We thought perhaps our crutch and cane dependent trio made this dandelion-filled field appear ominous to other hikers, but it's really hard to make cheerful dandelions look dangerous...

Aprica

We spent summer solstice driving from Volterra to Aprica. I remember passing Carrara, looking at the mountains, and wondering why there was so much snow--until we realized we were looking at mountains of marble. Most of the rest of the time, I had my eyes closed to avoid sneezing. Our chipper E turned 13 that day and cheerfully put up with our failure to adequately celebrate his transition to teenage-hood.

We went to Aprica so that S could ride the Gran Fondo Giordano. After riding the Medio Fondo section (155km, 3600 height meters, over the Gavia and Mortirolo passes), the dude decided he'd had enough, and he skipped the Gran Fondo's last 20km and 1400 height meters.

A few of the 2000+ riders getting ready to start

And they're off! Can you spot S?

Atop the Gavia Pass. Hooray for professional race photographers!

Atop the Mortirolo Pass. Doesn't look like much in this photo, but it's one of the most strenuous passes in bike racing, with a gradient that maxes out at 18%.

Coming back down into Aprica

A band played at the start of the race. The players spent the next several hours hanging out enjoying drinks near the finish line; as the first, second, and third place finishers of each race (Fondo, Medio Fondo, Gran Fondo) approached, the band regrouped to play a few measures of celebratory music (the cyclists passed by pretty quickly--why play longer?).

Nauders

While 3,000 jocks were biking the Dreilaender Giro, we spent a few hours poking around Nauders. This included eating too many Pommes (french fries) in the race tent, meandering up to Schloss Nauderberg (a castle first mentioned in historic documents in 1239, now privately owned and used as a hotel/restaurant), and saying hello to an abundance of garden gnomes on a narrow street leading back to our pension. I was inspired to remember the garden gnome Stefan and I received as a wedding present, though not sufficiently to bother finding the gnome in my mother-in-law's attic.

Dreilaender Giro

The reason we left Freiburg early Saturday was to drive to Nauders, Austria, so Stefan could ride the Dreilaender Giro on Sunday. He had been training for this race for months: he joined a cross fit class in January, upped his weekly mileage, biked up and down Mt. Mitchell a few times, and rode once from Durham to Mt. Airy. He's fit and firm, despite an old disc injury that necessitates pausing to stretch his back and legs several times a day; and he certainly wasn't going to let the common cold he picked up Friday stand in his way.

The only real threat was the weather. Last week, the forecasts for Nauders' Sunday weather ranged from steady rain to thunderstorms to sleet, with predicted high temps ranging from about 48-62^oF. Of course, the forecasts for Freiburg proved not to be terribly accurate, apart from the initial 98^oF day, so we shouldn't have worried too much. Nevertheless, after four hours of sunny driving on Saturday, we encountered increasing clouds and then pouring rain about 15 minutes outside of Nauders. It wasn't looking great for Sunday morning.

Saturday evening outside our pension: a pause in the rain.

It turned out that the weather couldn't have been better: clouds early Sunday morning yielded to warm sunshine. Stefan finished the race in a little more than nine hours--7 hours 46 minutes of actual biking, with stretch breaks interspersed to protect his back.

Testosterone Central, 6:25 a.m. Sunday

Stefan waiting with the rest of the jocks

The victorious biker

Now in its 20th year, the Dreilaender Giro is a loop that runs from Nauders over the Reschen pass into Italy, through Mals and Glurns to Prad and Trafoi, up over the Stilfser Joch/Stelvio pass, down into Switzerland, over Umbrail pass, down to Santa Maria Wal Muestair, to Ofen pass, to Zernez and Unterengadin, back into Austria at Martina, then to Norbertshoehe, and finally back to Nauders. The route is 168km long, with ~3,350m elevation gain.  

The highest pass in Italy, the Stilfser Joch is one of the most dramatic and demanding ascents in the Alps. Stefan took a photo near the top of the pass:

Sunshine and switchbacks

The road was built in 1820 to connect Austria to Lombardy, which then belonged to Austria. The road has 48 switchbacks. We drove up Monday morning to admire the view and Stefan's prowess, and this is what we saw:

Brrrr

Elias was thrilled with the snow, but we were all glad Stefan had sunshine yesterday.

Getting around

There's lots of room to park at the Heidelberg Hauptbahnhof.

King of Schauinsland

Southern Germany is a bicyclist's heaven. The scenery is gorgeous, and almost every highway (except the Autobahn) in Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttemberg seems to have a bike path running parallel with it. But Freiburg is clearly the hottest of all bicycling hot-spots. In 2007, Deutsche Welle reported that the city had twice as many bicycles as cars. According to the city's own website, Freiburg has over 400 km of designated bike paths, and about 30% of transportation in town is by bike. Freiburg even has a "glass shards hotline" for reporting flat-tire risks on the roads.

Here is my handsome husband on Sunday morning before setting off to ride in the Schauinslandkoenig Bergzeitfahren (the Schauinsland King mountain time trial race), which covered 11.5 km distance while ascending 800 meters up Freiburg's highest mountain. There were bicycles, duple and triple tandems, unicycles, in-line skaters, hand-powered cycles, recumbents, and bikes towing kiddie trailers. Stefan finished respectably in the middle of the pack of 950 but passed on the opportunity to put a crown on his head and have his photo taken at the top (in this race, everyone is "ein kleiner Koenig").