With people accusing me of becoming a roadie I’d better write an overdue report on a few days mountain biking by Lake Como. Rewind to October, warm sunny autumn weather, colourful leaves and dusty trails. When you drop over the pass from Switzerland into Italy and everything relaxes, vibrantly coloured villas, streets full of life and a chilled out atmosphere. The other side of this is that the mountain bike trails are difficult to get information about and very badly signposted but being one for an adventure this only made them more attractive.
The mountains rise up steeply from the shores of the lake and are covered in a network of hiking trails but its hard to tell what is actually rideable. There are often sections that are tough to walk so scrambling up with a bike is hard work but risks bring rewards and I found some amazing descents. The terrain higher up is very rocky and covered in Mediterranean type herb bushes whereas lower down there are lots of woodland singletracks ending in pretty villages with amazing coffee.
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Rifugio Menaggio ride – a long nasty road climb, a technical singletrack climb, a bit of hike-a-bike and then an amazing switchbacking rocky descent followed by flowing woodland singletrack all the way back down to the lake. Brill.
This was an amazing ride at B’tto di Nava, a real adventure expedition. A tough hour of climbing nearly went to waste because of terrible Italian signposting and when I found the path I spent a lot of time questioning if it was the right one because it was so crazy looking. Standing at the top on a narrow singletrack with a vertical drop off the edge, you can only see as far as the next switchbacks and then the trail several hundred meters below. The connection between the two involved and insane narrow track with 30 or 40 tight, loose, rocky switchbacks and a few steep drops and steps thrown in for good measure. Risks once again bringing rewards, like Italy!