Dolomites Day

Against CleanSteve's advice, I did not bring an umbrella on my holiday to Lake Garda, northern Italy. How could I have ignored such a sensible tip?

So, today I set off from Bardolino, the very beautiful town where I'm staying, on a coach trip to the Dolomites. My friend Dave had said it would be a memorable experience. It certainly was, but possibly not in the way he'd intended.

However, despite the weather being not up to much as we reached the heights of the Pordoi pass, we did pass through emerald and viridian landscapes, dotted with stone-and-wood houses; we admired many ski resorts and Austrian-influenced buildings. Even the Brenner motorway, which heads towards Innsbruck, is a triumph of engineering, supported by giant stone piles. In parts of the Adige river plain, it runs alongside vineyards and orchards planted on an in industrial scale. The scenery is the South Tyrol is both varied and verdant. Don't judge it on this one shot.

I missed hearing the call of the wild marmots in the high pass, but they don't come out till summer. It's still winter up there. But I've heard them before in Slovakia, in the summer of 1993, when I trekked with some Czech friends and we made a bivouac camp and slept at 2,000 metres up the mountains. (Now there's a trip I'll never forget. The climber, Vaclav, who took me and his sons up there, is dead now).

We descended, after eating schnitzel and making snowballs at the restaurant at the end of the universe, and went through the highest pass in the Dolomites. Rain lashed the coach windows. The natural climbing walls that were used to film Cliffhanger with Sylvester Stallone, were unfortunately obscured by cloud.

After passing through a number of ski resorts, we finished up in a town called Ortisei, which is famous for its hand carved and painted wooden figures. Think of traditional nativity sets...

I was dreading spending an hour and twenty minutes there, because of the relentless rain, but once I'd visited the permanent exhibition, the obligatory tourist shop, the church, and the very pretty round-the-ski-school-and-the-big-hotel -walk that ended up with an escalator ride to the town level, I just had time for a caffe macchiato and a false start in the wrong direction before running back to the coach. Last one back!

(I couldn't buy a wooden St Anthony or any other figure, because even the small ones were about 25 Euros. A lot of work goes into them. My friend Dave would have loved one. He says he didn't go to the 'carvery village' on his trip).

The journey back down the valley followed a tumbling river all the way. We were, of course, below the vegetation line by now, so all was green again. This was definitely my favourite part of the journey. The guide, who was knowledgeable but far, far, too talkative, wisely left us alone at this point. I wasn't alone in wishing I could turn her voice off at times. We were mostly British tourists on our trip. We like to button up!

I arrived back at my Hotel Bardolino before seven, happy to peel off wet socks and begin the difficult task of opening a bottle of a dubious- looking cocktail without a bottle opener. That takes me back a bit...

The Picos de Europa national park in Cantabria and Asturias, Northern Spain, is still my favourite mountainous region in continental Europe. Link to follow.