“How is the weather going to be ?”, someone asked in the morning, having the eyes still closed. It was predicted to be rainy for 100% and we weren’t sure how to take it. However, we made our bikes ready and started our trip. First destination would be the village Guarda.
Our guides told us about the road. Some down, some up, they said with this creepy I-won’t-tell-you-how-much-down-and-how-much-up-it-will-go-smile. After clapping in the hands we hit the road. We packed some water and a rain jacked just in case .
The first path was great and pretty easy. When we waited at a fountain our guides had this creepy smile again in their faces. “Now we will make a break for drinking and for loosing some clothes, because now section with the steep-part starts”
After riding up the mountain for more than 40 minutes, we understood where that smile came from. We took the mountain slowly but in the end even the members who weren’t experienced with riding a mountain up before, reached the top. The street to our destination was wet – not us !
Guarda is a little clichés village from a fairytale. There we would meet Maria, who was the first female mayor some years ago. Just yesterday night a part of our group watched a movie at an open air cinema and heard about that in the early 1970s women were finally allowed to vote in Switzerland. Maria had a smile in her face when we told her about it and shared some of the experiences she made back in that time.Despite that she told us about beautiful Guarda and its interesting history. After meeting Maria we had the pleasure to be invited to a lovely prepared regional lunch at one of the villages farms owned by Ulrike and her family who produce organic meat and dairy-products.
This prepared us well for our challenging ride to the campground where we faced first small “group-dynamic-problems”. After these slight struggles we enjoyed a wonderful afternoon at the river, since it was the first real hot summer day. Only the summer storm disturbed us while having our dinner, but we still fell into bed with a smile on our faces.
