Today was a very pleasant ride from Dolce to Trento — the route was on dedicated cycle paths with mostly flat gradient, following the Adige river.
The scenery here is magnificent with vineyard strewn valleys surrounded by misty mountains and the occasional fortified castle up above.

We spotted some other cycle tourists for the first time, not surprising given the quality of these bike paths. Up to now, other recreational cyclists have been road cyclists out training on their ultra light steeds in full Lycra get up.

The bike paths have lots of debris on them – we were warned by our B&B hostess that this was due to the storm on Saturday. This contributed to our first bike repair – Kris got a puncture – a thorn went right through his tyre. Its the first time we have ever had a puncture from a thorn, these tyres are pretty thin. We may have to replace them sooner than expected.a coupleThe bike paths have lots of debris on them – we were warned by our B&B hostess that this was due to the storm on Saturday. This contributed to our first bike repair – Kris got a puncture – a thorn went right through his tyre. Its the first time we have ever had a puncture from a thorn, these tyres are pretty thin. We may have to replace them sooner than expected.

When we got to Trento we spent some time riding around the outskirts looking for a super store to buy some replacement inner tubes. We were eventually directed to a small neighbourhood store where we got two more spare inner tubes. Our distance to Trento was 75 km, and we added another 7 on riding on our search for tubes.

Trento inner city was buzzing when we got there. Our B&B is just around the corner from the old town and quite comfortable even though we share a bathroom (there was only one other guest). A bonus of the place is a shared kitchen were you can get tea or coffee at any time.

We did some research on our route and decided to scrap the plan to go to Villach, as we want to make sure we stay on good cycle routes – so we are taking the Via Claudia Augusta route across to Innsbruck.

We had a fun evening walking around the Trento old town, which has lots of pedestrian shopping and eating areas and historical stone buildings. We had our best panini ever (small shop, old lady, thick cut ham, toasted, EUR 4) and we found a hip craft beer place (Uva & Menta) to hang out in. In fact, the craft beer bar was the liveliest place in town, with groups of locals enjoying an early evening out. We even circled back for a second beer as we couldn’t find anywhere else quite as good.

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