Sunday dawns with the top of the mountain to the east, our 1st challenge for the day bathed in glorious sunshine. We are in the village of Parpan, having had a magnificent 9 hours of blissful sleep. Except for a brief moment when i had to get up to retrive my pillow which i tossed at Philip to stop his snoring.
Yesterday (Saturday 21/08) must count as the longest day ever. It started in fact at 04:30 on Thursday when Inky, beerboy and Andrew turned up at my door to go to the airport. I had only 2 and a half hrs sleep as last minute preparations went awry. But excited to get going on this adventure, we embarked on a tortuous commute that would take us on flights to johburg, Doha and Zurich over a 29 hour journey. This included being stuck in Qatar for 9 hours.
Eventually we arrived in Zurich and bumped into Aileen and Lizzie in immigration. Some more faffing and then on the train to Chur. A huge bike assembly faff on the pavement, and we're good to go. Except for one thing - 4 of our party unaccounted for. The belgian contingent are running late. We make a hasty plan to stash bike boxes at a guest house and set off to the cable car, a 2 stage mission up the 1st mountain on our trip, the 1st stage is a big car and takes all our bikes and us. The 2nd will only take 2 passengers at a time and bikes hanging off a hook on the outside. Finally we regroup at the top, have a quick late lunch at the cafe at the top and start riding. The 4 belgians at this stage not far behind. Its only a short ride to Parpan, our overnight stop. But straight away we get onto a brutal climb, averaging 18% with sustained. 23% secfions. We try manfully, but no-one manages to ride all the way. At the top we hit some glorious single track. Then I relised why I am here. I'ts like coming home. some yelling and whooping of Joy as we delight in the trails, then silence as it becomes more challenging and the mojo starts working; and we push the limits. We drop into a small village callled Churwalden via a steep grassy slope which we slalom down and meet up with Brossius crowd as we pause for a while to take it all in. It is now getting late and dinner deadline is at 7 pm which we will not make. One final big climb to finish for the day to go, but we are all exhausted after a tough travel and minimal sleep. At such times you get into a zone where you are half asleep and able to tune out of the suffer zone and not feel pain or fatigue.
Finally we are at Parpan and find the lodge. Over a huge meal and several Calanda Lagers we toast the start of another great adventure. Its good to be back.
