Back to see if I could get a bit further up the road. In the end I made it to the top section although didn't have time to ride over to the village, next time. There is a segment of 17% over 0.5km.

The idea was to take the road above Luzzogno towards Alpe Busca as far as it is surfaced. But I was unsure of the route above Luzzogno so took the Inuggio road instead.

A little tour with tot to get some air. The road was completely pisted by the passage of the hundreds of skiers, snow shoers, sledgers and every other kind of engine.

A little afterwork. I started around 16h30 from the car park at 1190 meters but it was no doubt possible to tour from much lower down, from the main road to St Pancrasse at 1000 meters even.

I'd spotted the Alpe Loccia while searching for new routes around lake Orta in Italy. According to the mountain bikers it is an uber steep climb with sections over 20%.

Seriously, I'd vowed not to come back after last year but here I was, struggling up the first killer wall out of Monte Buglio cheered on by the usual assortment of deranged Italian cani.

I'd never cycled up to Scareno before and to be honest, there isn't much reason to. It is a long way up a big of a rough road.

There is a heatwave at the moment and many people on Strava were complaining about the temperatures. At the same time the weather service predicted afternoon storms.

With the end of the lockdown we decided to push out a little bit to this classic switchback descent. Unfortunately it started to rain, hard just as we were arriving.

For a change decided to ski tour and see how much snow had fallen on Friday. The Pic Blanche de Bedina is good value as the climb is pretty consistent from the start of the valley.