Day 3 - mountain passes in Italy and France, or simply dirt road driving

This morning we left again early to master all the mountain tops that where asked of us today. But first.. we found a solution for our police officer in our car.. one of our fellow Dutch teams actually drove a police car so we made the right photo!

Then off we went to get to find the first dirt road (Strada Provenciale 172) via Turin to climb up to the Colle delle Finestre.. 12 kilometers.. and it took a while! Proudly we arrived at the top thinking to have done our deed for today.

We went down again to the valley to visit the Forte di Fenestrelle. It is the biggest alpine fortification in Europe, having a surface area of 1,300,000 m². The fortress, built by Savoy between 1728 and 1850 under the design of the architect Ignazio Bertiol, guards the access to Turin via the Chisone valley and stands at altitudes between 1,100 and 1,800 m. Huge… lots of clever details.. like very slippery flagstones on the ground in the middle of the gate so that horses would slip and with that .. enemies can’t enter. We also enjoyed an excellent cappuccino up there! While we were inside, one of the cars on the parking lot was robbed.. of course we had driven right to the entrance and so our car was on the ‘save side’ and not robbed.

While we were up there, we met a few of the Austrian rally teams. They convinced us to do the ‘mountain top detour’, 36 km of dirt road with spectacular views. It starts with the famous Colle dell’Assietta, and leads to the Colle Lauson to the Colle Blegier marking the half point. Then it goes on to the Cole Cost Piana, Colle Bourget and finally Colle Basset. 2 hours and 45 min, of dirt road, pot holes, rocks and steep valleys right next to us. It seems to be famous for motor bikes. The same teams overtook us multiple times.. we met them at the tops, said hello, took pictures and then we drove on and they overtook us again and again and again. Luckily, only 3 cars that came toward us, finding a spot and passing each other was difficult. Most of our rally teams did 1 or 2 km to find a spot to turn around and skip this task.. We made it to the bitter end.. the first 2 hours with lots of enthusiasm.. in the end we were dead tired.. you have to focus on each meter you drive. We never drove anywhere that slowly.. ‘Bullie ‘on the other hand just climbed up and came down.. the car is simply amazing with its 23 years (but we also noticed that despite our little distance, the tank was empty in the evening)!

Along the way we also completed our daily task to ask a nice guy for his bicycle above the 2000m tree line and to bike 200m. Up in the mountain trails it is truly easy to make friends.

Finally down, we switched drivers since I was ko. Claudia drove us over the French border to start driving the Route des Grandes Alpes. Another amazing scenery, nice paved roads (-: .. just having to climb up the 2500m to the Cod d'Izoard.. and back down to 1100m. We found a nice mountain café where we met other teams, of course the Dutch again…, ate blueberry cake with local amazing fresh and delicious blueberries and then we drove on to Barcelonnette, at an elevation of 1100m to stay overnight..Barcelonnette is a commune of France and a subprefecture in the department of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. It is located in the southern French Alps, at the crossroads between Provence, Piedmont and the Dauphiné, and is the largest town in the Ubaye Valley...2570 inhabitants.. so 'largest' town has to be taken with a grain of salt..

A quiet dinner with lots of fresh morels and truffle. Not much going on in September in those French small mountain towns. We certainly did not do many miles today, but it feels like we drove to the Mount Everest twice.. an amazing experience you only do once in a life time.