Day 4 - Dobbioco - Heinfels, Austria - Cortina D'Ampezzo

Spectacular views were our reward for all our climbing today

Immediately after rolling out of our hotel this morning in Dobbiaco, John discovered that the rear derailleur would not shift. And even worse, it was stuck in the hardest gear on our biggest climbing day of the week. Not good.  Lots of slack cable at the rear pointed towards a classic cable brake except the cable wasn't broken at the shifter end like it typically is. After a couple of minutes John discovered that since the bike frame had couplers, the cable also had a coupling mechanism that the front half of the cable pulled out of. But, with no 2.5 mm hex tool on the multi repair tool, there was no way to repair the coupler. Then John remembered that he brought his full set of hex tools to put our seats and pedals on the rental bike.  In a few minutes the shift cable coupler was repaired and we were back on our way.

With the shifter cable repaired, we took a side trip that was not on our tour schedule. We had read about an 18th century covered bridge that was right off the Drauradweg trail, about 19 km to the east which took us from Italy into Austria.  We both like covered bridges and we had wanted to go see it yesterday but since the weather was questionable, we didn't want to push our luck.

Once we had seen the beautiful craftsmanship of the bridge we headed back to where we started in Dobbiaco, where we had some lunch before heading south on our planned tour route to Cortina D'Ampezza.

The Drauradweg trail down to the covered bridge was very pretty, but the path to Cortina was stunning.

After lunch, we climbed steadily up for 18 km on a very heavy rental tandem.  We topped out at 5049 feet above sea level before heading back down to Cortina.   On the way to Cortina, beautiful lakes, the Dolomite Mountains, and green mountain pastures greeted us at every turn.

Upon arrival into our destinstion of Cortina, we had wonderful pizza at La Ponte, right beside  our Hotel Villa Neve.  After dinner, we asked the owner where we could get good gelato, but he said "good gelato in Cortina, no".  So glad we didn't go chase down gelato only to be disappointed.  Now off to bed.

Riding route for today here.

Pictures below.   The Dolomites continue tomorrow...

John saves the day

The Punbrugge Bridge in Heinfels, Austria

Outstanding craftmanship on the inside of the bridge

View from the path in Austria

The path to Cortina D'Ampezza

Long ago, the path used to be the Dolomite Railwood.  Switch keeper's house.

Old train tunnel on the path to Cortina

Coming into Cortina

Almost to Cortina