Via Claudia Augusta: Last days (Trento, Rivalta, Verona)

to Verona...

Day 8: Bike from Auer to Trento. Mostly flat, along the Adige River. All on separated bike paths.

 

Adige River and Dolomites

 

Flat bike path along the Adige

Trento is a rather large city... too busy for us. As we felt with Merano, we prefer the smaller towns/villages.  Also, we felt Trento to be a little to self absorbed. It didn't help our hotel was the "Grand Hotel Trento", which was rather fancy yet lacking character or comfort (the rooms were not as good as out country inns). We were surprised to hear a lot of American accents.*

 

* Sorry if we sound "anti American"... it's hard these days with the USA actively attacking Canada both verbally and certainly economically. Most Canadians are quite disgusted (and dismayed)... all, hopefully, will resolve in the coming years.  

 

Trento

Day 9: Bike from Trento to Rivalta. As with other cities, a bit convoluted getting out of Trento by bike route, but once out, it was an easy, flat (or slight downhill) to the very small village of Rivalta. Cloudy in the morning but soon sunny and very warm. Our hotel there was a small family-run inn (Albergo Olivo), where we had a comfortable room (with AC), very good dinner, and zero other tourists. Not much English spoken, but everyone made it work. We very much appreciated being out of the city!

 

a

Castel Beseno

Our ritual: Morning tea time along the route

Albergo Olivo (Rivalta)

Enjoying a post-ride beer (alcohol-free) at the Olivo

Day 10: Our final day of biking, from Rivalta to Verona.  Another sunny day (low 20s C). Had a short "crisp" uphill (as described by our bike company app) to Rivoli Veronese, site of a major battle in January 1797 (Napolean's first major victory). 

Half-way up to Rivoli Veronese, Michelle takes a rest (looking North, up Adige river)

Fort Rivoli (formerly known as Fort Wohlgemuth)

The rest of the way was gently downhill to Verona. Arriving Verona, still on bike paths, was a little hectic, made easier by our hotel being just off the bike path and outside of the centre. 

All-in-all, a lovely day of riding making a successful end to our 510+ km, 10-day bike ride through the Alps. No rain (in the daytime),  and Michelle did it all on a regular bike (in contrast to David on an e-bike)!

 

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Via Claudia Augusta biking: Tirol (Austria) and Südtirol (Italy)

Michelle biking towards Italy and the Reschen Pass

Day 4: A short bike ride (15 km) from Füssen to reach Reutte (Tirol, Austria), where we put our bikes on a trailer and were shuttled over the Fern Pass to Fernstein Castle, where we started our ride (mostly downhil) to Imst.

 

Our hotel in Imst (Hotel Neuner)

It rained heavily at night in Imst, but again, we were lucky... the sun came out the next day.

Day 5: A 1.5 hour bike ride to Landeck where we again shuttled over the steep uphill section of the Austrian side of the Reschen Pass to Nauders. We still had 150m of gentle biking into Italy over the pass (which is wide and relatively flat at its actual high point) to out inn in St. Valentin auf der Haide.

Again, a night of heavy rain that cleared up by the next morning.

Day 6:  Another beautiful sunny day and a LOT of downhill riding. And a long ride... about 75 km to Merano. Many villages, many castles... and many bike riders.

Looking back towards St Valentin and the Haidersee

Glurns

Day 7: Leaving the relatively big city of Merano, we had an easy ride gently downhill to near Bolzano. From there, the bike route surprised us with a twisty 150m climb. Through narrow tunnels with too many other bikers. (Especially the racing types, none which you hear coming up from behind you... noone uses their voice or bell to warn you. We found them to be obnoxious, and had our private terms for them... sometimes said out loud as they passed by too close and too fast.). Ended up in the nice little village of Auer, as it turns out, our last night in German-speaking Südtirol.

 

Michelle exiting tunnel on bike rout up to St. Michael (a very busy route!)

 

the racing types...

Via Claudia Augusta Biking: Augsburg to Füssen

First day to Landsberg am Lech: mostly flat, countryside biking. No traffic. Tired by the end (we weren't used to being on bikes for 4 hours).

 

 

Alcohol-free Dunkel-Weisen: Excellent!

Augsburg Cathrdral (Dom): Oldest stained glass windows...

Augsburg 

Entry to alt stadt (old town) of Landsberg am Lach

Landsberg festival

We got lucky with the rain. Heavy rain overnight in Landsberg, sunny by morning. Day 2: A very nice bike ride to Schöngau.

St. Michael's Basilica: 1220 AD. (Altenstadt)

Day 3: An even better day of biking, from Schöngau to Füssen.

Beautiful biking between Schöngau and Füssen. Alps in the distance

One of many (!) Via Claudia Augusta information boards along the way

Just before Füssen, the bike trail became very busy. Füssen itself was very (!) busy, including North American tourists (lots of Americans... not seenelsewhere on this bike tour).

 

We arrived Füssen early enough, so David insisted Michelle see Neuschwanstein Castle. BIG mistake. An overcrowded zoo. (He visited last in 1979... it wasn't crowed back then.) We squeezed into an overcrowded overheated bus like sardines (not helped by the USA tour group who jumped the long line, urged by their leader to do so), ran to take a photo from the overcrowded Marienbrucke and then ran back through the approaching new crowds to the bus. Michelle was clear: Never do that to me again!

 

Neuschwanstein Castle (NOT worth dealing with the crowds!)

 

Cow symphony...

 

Along the bike route...

Bicycling the Via Claudia Augusta: Augsburg to Verona

 

Via Claudia Augusta

Back to Europe (finally!).

First, 10-day inn-to-inn cycling trip along the Via Claudia Augusta, from Augsburg (Germany) through the alps to Verona, Italy. A self-guided but organized trip. (Inntours provides luggage transport, hotel bookings AND transport over two passes in the Alps.)

 After the bike trip, we head to Greece for two weeks. 

Summer 2026: 6 weeks on Pelagia

 

A trip similar to Summer 2025. We started late due to new engine installation, so we didn't go above Cape Caution. Total of about 600 nm.

Quite a bit of rain in the Broughtons, but enough sun to keep us happy. It was great to be in cooler (15-23 degrees C) temps and no wildfire smoke.

Managed to get about 60 nm of sailing.

New engine was great. However, we had a very strange issue where we found the bolts on the coupling between the propeller shaft and transmission all loose (indeed,3 were off!). This despite David having checked their tightness 50-hrs earlier (running time). We have our suspicions as to how this came about.

Funny episode was kayaking into Booker Lagoon on a spring tide... and getting stuck inside before the current allowed us to paddle back out to our boat (2 hours later). A real newbie mistake (it could have been worse, we could have been stuck for 4-5 hours). We were able to laugh about it.

Waiting out the tide in Booker Lagoon....

 

As usual, we had an excellent sail back down Johnstone Strait -- NW winds 27-25 kt made it easy and reasonably fast. 

Only one new-to-us anchorage this summer (Percy Anchorage, near Nanaimo). 

After a week relaxing in the Desolation Sound area, we had a sail to Pender Harbour (where we stayed 3 nights at the VRC outstation), then another sail across to Percy Anchorage. We briefly detoured to Clam Bay in the Gulf Islands to meet up with Wayne and Lee on SV Chanter. We had one last good sail across Georgia Strait, completing our Summer trip at our VRC berth.