Como to Basel

This was to be the exciting part of the expedition and I had been both looking forward to it and fearing its implications. The plan was to cycle over the old St Gotthard pass along the SwissMobility Cycle Route 3. It was all there in detail on their website http://www.veloland.ch/en/national-routes/route-03.html . I had also found a number of other people who had done exactly the same thing and I was sure that I would be able to complete it, just as I had got over the Pyranees three years before.

I particularly enjoyed reading http://www.my-bicycling-adventure.com/Gotthard-Pass.html and in hindsight was very jealous of the weather they had. As it happened I was caught by thunderstorms at Belinzona with a forecast of the same for the next couple of days. I bottled out and the red line on the map shows the part that I didn’t ride. I took the train from Belinzona to Basel and it rained for most of the journey, only letting up when we got to Lucerne. I have left the day plans in place along with the GPX files that I had worked out from the detailed maps on the Swiss cycling website. Feel free to download them. I believe they are accurate although I haven’t actually ridden them. They follow the OSMcycle trace that you can find on BikeHike and so far as I can see they match the Swiss Cycle Map exactly.

Campsites and Distances