My summer holidays are very late this year, for a number of reasons. I worked all the way through to mid-August, had a traditional Italian Ferragosto involving lots of relatives and far too much food, and then headed up to the Alps in search of some respite from the heat and humidity of the Po valley.

This was the walk back from dinner, with the storm building behind the Presolana massif.

Unfortunately I didn’t get as much walking done as I might have wanted; my kids are pretty game for a hike, but short legs will only carry them so far. Luckily that storm also cooled the air back down in the plain, so this morning I woke up bright and early and hopped on my bike. I hadn’t done serious miles since Finale — in fact I had only been on my bike once — so the first hour was misery, compounded when I realised that I had failed to bring any snacks or energy gels along. I nearly turned back at that point, but I’m glad I didn’t!

Looking down the Caldarola pass with the Pietra Parcellara in the background.

This was partisan country eighty years ago, with volunteer forces, remnants of the Italian armed forces who had not gone over to the Germans or Mussolini’s rump state at Salò, and even captured Allied servicemen. One of the most famous stories is that of “Capitano Mack”, Archibald Donald Mackenzie. It’s a fascinating story: he was captured in North Africa and was sent to a PoW camp in Veano, in the foothills of the Apennines near here.1 When the Italian government surrendered in 1943, he was unable to flee with the other inmates due to illness, and ended up staying and fighting with the local partisans.

The Rocca d’Olgisio on the ridge there dates back at least to 1037 and may be several centuries older than that. It was also a major partisan base, and it is obvious why; it still looks daunting today.

My trusty steed, at the “Devil’s Home” pass.

The last climb back up to the ridge road that would take me home was a low-gear grind the whole brutal way, but I admit that I stopped at a couple of likely bushes and ate my fill of blackberries while getting my breath back. I also drank all of my water, perhaps unsurprisingly since, while the morning was cool (for August), the humidity was 90%. I bought a waist pack with a water reservoir on the Cotopaxi sale for those days when two bottles in the cages are not enough, but I had not brought it with me today, more fool me.

Just some farm on the trail of Saint Colombanus.

Regardless, a good day out exploring some new roads and letting my legs know I haven’t forgotten about them.

  1. The old PoW camp is now a summer camp run by the Church2 which I visited as a child and which my own children are now cycling through in their turn. ↩

  2. Re-reading this, I realised that I should specify: in Italy, unless a qualification is added, the Church is always the Catholic Church. Oriana Fallaci, famously a lifelong atheist, switched to calling herself a “Christian atheist” in deference to the weight of the Church in Italian cultural life. ↩