Day 3 – Time for mountains
Asphalt and towns
The morning wakes us with its unbearable heat. After a quick yogurt with cereals we leave the suburbs of Verona towards a new Region. Our goal: Friuli’s Alps. The way is long. The asphalt broken and noisy, the heat still unbearable. We pass through a series of deserted towns. Traffic is irregular and sometimes we find ourselves stuck, with no air conditioning and our backs melting on the seats.
Many rivers: but where’s the water?
We cross fields, towns, again fields and a lot of bridges. Rivers are small and hide themselves in the trees’ shade, to avoid the late morning sun. The river beds are wide, but just for little water. We decide to stop in a village called Salettoul where we rest on the riverside. The Piave doesn’t carry a lot of water during this season. We expected to be able to bath but we are not. People here are friendly and ask us what we are doing there and suggest us to stay for the night in the parking by the river, that is quiet and beautiful. We decide to go on. At the end of the bridge we realise that on the other side there was more water and we could have bath.
The importance of water
We are running out of water, actually we did run out of water. But a beautiful fountain saves us. We are able to refill our 30 litres tank, our 10 litres secondary tank and our bottles. G takes advantage of the fresh water to wash himself quickly, he was sweating all over his seat. We do not consume much water, much less than what we would do in an apartment. We decide to monitor our water consumption in the next days to make a small report on the topic. The trip goes on.
We cross many more rivers and fields of grape: we are in the land of ‘prosecco’. We finally reach Friuli Venezia Giulia. Here we cross San Daniele del Friuli, the town of prosciutto but, as we do not eat meat, we pass-by without looking back. We finally see the mountains in front of us.
Passing by the majestic walls of Osoppo reminds us that this was a land of borders and conflicts, where Italians and Austrians fought for something we do not understand.
Moggio Udinese welcomes us with a fresh beer and the eyes of the locals pointed as us as we speak English or French.
Getting some information for the next days in the nature
Moggio Udinese is one of the villages in the territory of the Prealpi Giulie Park, and in particular it hosts the Nature Reserve of the Alba Valley. We pass by the tourist office that provides us with all we need. The lady welcoming us is mostly happy to receive someone and talk a bit – there are not many tourists passing by.
When we leave the village we realise we didn’t really gather useful information. We climb a narrow road in which we risk to break our old Ducato in a desperate search for some waterfalls on the Rio Fonderiis. We agree on the fact that we have never seen such a steep road in such bad conditions. When we park on the roadside the van cries trying to cool down. We met just one car climbing up. For the first time in weeks (we stayed in Monza for almost 14 days before to leave) it’s fresh. We decide to shower as soon as possible. Naked, on the road, with our portable shower, with a bit more than 5 litres of water, we manage to clean ourselves completely.
A fresh night?
After a day of sweating and moving we enjoy the post-shower freshness eating a sandwich and drinking a bit of wine. With sweatshirts and long pants we enjoy the evening cold air and get ready for a nice sleep in the middle of the mountains, in the quietness of nature. No one is passing by, we decide to install our table in the middle of the road for dinner – see the picture of G eating a carrot.
Tomorrow we are going to discover some -hopefully- beautiful waterfalls. We are not moving the van for more than 10km tomorrow, which means we will have time to hike and relax.
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