Euro Day 18 - Venice to Predazza, Sea to Mountains

Thursday, 11 July 2019

Jon and I loved having Venice almost to ourselves so much yesterday that we got up early again and went for a final stroll before packing up the house and catching the 8:30 am ferry back to the mainland..

We didn't have a lot of time to spare, none actually, so once in the car I slavishly followed Google's instructions (and only once drove into a bus interchange) and drove us the 2.45 minutes to Val Venegia - right in the heart of the Dolomites.  The mountains started to grow and grow from one hour away from Venice - by the time we arrived they were stunning..

We had to start before 12:30 so we only had time to put on our shoes, fight over the few biscuits we had in the car, then start. It's the first time I've been orienteering in Europe since 1992 so it went fine considering. The terrain was delightful!  Zali made one big mistake, the rest of us made lots of smaller ones. 

The download station was in some old stables:

After we'd all finished we headed on to Predazzo, a very pretty ski-ing & hiking town.

We have a very lovely AirBNB apartment here which feels like a bit of a bargain after the Venice prices! Our apartment is up the top at the far end of this building above.

After the fairly hectic pace we've been keeping, the next 3 days of orienteering will feel like a bit of a break!  The weather is going to change tomorrow so we might actually be bringing out the warm jackets as the start is a chairlift and 2000m above sea level!