“This way,” our guide Giovanni Riccadonna pointed to a black, wooded track that wove steeply up from the side of the main road. It was hard to tell whether he was serious, because he’d been jokingly directing us up vertiginous walking paths and MTB trails all day. Now, though, it was 7pm, and the skies, heavy and dark, had opened. We were supposed to have arrived at our accommodation four hours ago. Thirty kilometres earlier, as the light had begun to soften, we’d stopped at a viewpoint where a waterfall thundered down to the river below. “Ten kilometres more,” Giovanni had told us. “Plus or minus.”
I’d come to Trentino in northern Italy to ride the Doga alpine cycling route, a 110km course from the foreboding Brenta Dolomites to the shores of Lake Garda. Opened in 2019, the route is designed to take cyclists through the backroads of wild Trentino, to showcase more of the region’s treasures beyond its two crown jewels. In late September, I was looking to prolong the cycling season before retiring my bike for the winter. While Europe’s highest mountains had already gained their first dustings of snow, Trentino, with its warmer microclimate, promised brooding Dolomites, pine forests and empty roads.
