Today we hired bikes and joined a small group of two other adventure seekers and our local biking guide. We started out easy, weaving our gentle way through the valley of Val Gardena to the neighbouring towns, selecting routes that took us along dedicated cycleways along the river. It was all very pleasant and scenic. We stopped for coffee and played around in a bike park doing tricks on ramps and obstacle courses. Then things got less "easy". Our guide chose to take us back on a more scenic route. Gone were the gentle gradients replaced with chain-straining, steep climbs, some exhilarating forest trails and finally some hair-raising, eye-watering, white-knuckle-clenching downhills where we hit 70 kmph on roads with traffic, over-taking cars. Five hours after we begun we eased the wind-etched grins from our faces with gelato and beers.
The day after the bike ride we were feeling a bit lethargic. We decided to take it "easy" again and visit St. Christina, one of the neighbouring villages we had whizzed through yesterday. In true Feng Power Tour style we decided to visit the town by taking a gondola up to the top of the mountain, hiking across to the next valley and taking another chairlift down to the town. This took about 4 hours instead of the ten minute bus ride we could have taken but again the scenery won us over. It is truly beautiful and we enjoyed the walk. We kept telling ourselves that our legs were feeling better from the easy exercise.
St Christina had little to offer over Ortesei but we walked around and had some coffees before returning to Ortesei for one of the best meals we've had on our trip. We were stuffed but just managed to polish off our two desserts of raspberry tiramisu and wild berries with vanilla ice-cream.
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