Clarionista's on tour!

Mortirolo Summit
Originally uploaded by westlothianclarion

Malcom sent in this photo of himself in club colours with his wife, Jackie, on the Mortirolo Summit and a wee report about their trip:

We've been cycling in South East Switzerland a few times but last year we had to resort to the train because the weather was just too dangerous on the route we'd chosen. Looking to complete some unfinished business I stumbled across an excellent write up of Sadiq's trip to Bormio last year with Allan Nelson and decided to combine the two.

We started with a warm up day crossing the Bernina which was fairly easy going and followed up on the following 2 days with the Mortirolo and the Gavia.

Mortirolo which was just too hard (a sustained 22% at one part) but had the Marco Pantani memorial plus the best cycling chat (didn't ask the Dutch guys too many questions about what their 'preparation' for the Granfondo Steven Rooks - for which they were wearing the shirts - might be).

Gavia was awesome. I know Andy Hampsten had it bad but we enjoyed the snow walls. A really fast safe descent into Bormio too.

If the club trip to Mallorca sets a trend, I'd strongly recommend a summer week in Bormio. Classic climbs on every road out of town and fantastic bike hotels with all you can eat meals plus a secure garage, workshop and free overnight cycling kit laundry service. Not overly pricey either.

From there we headed back north over the Foscagno and finally got to ride the lake road at Livigno. We arrived 2 years too late to ride through the 3km tunnel back into Switzerland but since the ban they've started to run a bike bus through. We finished with a rough stuff trip over the Castainas which we managed to get over just as it looked like the weather was finally going to break.