Page 2
Europe Bike Tour 2009
Page 2
Days 7 to 13 - Lake Como / Domaso / Como / St Moritz
The bells, the bells - the bloody bells, do they ever stop? Domaso should be the most tranquil of places you could ever imagine. It's location, nestling along the northern shoreline of Lake Como, with a backdrop of lush green hills is isdylic but those bloody out of tune bells..........!!
We've booked a week here at the Villa Anna Maria, Domaso and after a good ride up from Chioggia we find a beautiful place with spacious living accommodation and a lovely pool. .....Did I mention the bells? Every hour on the hour and every hour on the half hour they ring out their tuneless song over the little town - all day and all through the night from 2 of the 3 churches in the town. Then we get the 6 am peals calling the faithful to morning mass which is repeated again at 6 pm........15 minutes they go on for! How the hell anyone here manages to sleep is beyond our comprehension. When we leave at the end of our week here we all have bags the size of Manchester under our eyes.
Bells or no bells, the plan is to hole up here for a week and take it easy, with just a couple of rides out on the bikes planned. One will be to Mandello de Lario on the opposite side of the lake to visit the Moto Guzzi dealership, D'Agostini's. Wesley booked the Guzzi in there before we left the UK to see if they could do a better job of tuning it than the English dealerships - they couldn't! The Villa owner has suggested we take a run up to St Moritz over the Bernina pass, so we'll give that a go too. We also plan to take a run down to the town of Como on a bus and return on a boat. Then there's the storm - mustn't forget that!
First off the villa.........
The house dates from the mid
1600s, this is the entrance hall complete with hand painted frescoes
The bikes all nice and secure in
the villa owner's rather rustic garage
Domaso & Lake Como.
This is the way from the villa down to the lakeside,
Photo Wesley
Domaso is a maze of small alleyways like this
Domaso & Lake Como taken from above the town
Photo Wesley
From the bedroom window at the
villa
Ride to Agostini's & St Moritz
As mentioned earlier, Wesley had booked his Guzzi in at Agostini's, the Guzzi Dealership at Mandello de Lario on the opposite side of the lake to Domaso. He'd had it serviced and "set-up" in the UK and it ran like a bag spanners afterwards so he re-did it himself as a temporary measure and booked it at Agostini's for when we were at Lake Como. The thought being that having connections with the nearby factory they'd be able to sort it no probs. Funny how things never turn out as we'd expect, they ended up making it as bad as it was when he had it done in the UK!
The Guzzi outside Agostini's
It's about 140 miles round trip to St Moritz and back, over some of the best roads you'll find anywhere. The climb up the Bernina pass is particularly stunning......................
Arriving at St Moritz
Video
Run to St Moritz
Day out to Como
We fancy a boat ride. So we leave the bikes at the villa and head for the bus stop, the idea is to take the bus for the 28 mile ride down to Como at the other end of the lake and get a boat back. The bus ride takes a fair while, the lakeside roads are narrow which makes progress a slow affair but we arrive at Como just in time for lunch - and a beer! Como itself isn't much of a place, the usual array of shops and a MacDonalds and that's about it. We spend an hour or so there before we make our way to the ferry pier to catch our boat back to Domaso.
According to Wesley this is biscuit
museum!
..........................and this is a Honda Museum!
The hydrofoil ferry coming into
Como
Back at Domaso
These are part of the mountains we crossed to get to St
Moritz