I woke up to find that the Italian hikers were dressed and packing. I checked the time and decided that 7am was too early for someone of my trekking experience to be getting up, so I dozed until eight, when the last of them left the room, casting an amused glance in my direction.An hour later the other guests were only just ready to check out when I arrived to do the same. I let them go in front, and regretted it. It started cordially enough, but soon arms were flailing and much fast and loud Italian was being exchanged. Eventually they left, and I presented myself to the now very worked up lodge owner to settle my bill. I was then stuck with the same problem the others had had, which was that the lodge’s credit card machine had stopped working. This was quite a problem, because I had no cash and the nearest cash point (ATM) was about 10 km away, and a long way down the mountain. It wasn’t a problem though. The owner wrote down her address and asked me to send a cheque. She didn’t even seem too bothered that it would be a couple of weeks.

The great thing about this place, I reflected, was peoples’ wiliness to trust and help each other. You certainly didn’t see this sort of thing in the large cities, and not even in Cortina – you have to go right out in the sticks to find people who can adapt to this sort of unexpected problem.

Leaving the lodge, I walked out into a perfect crystal-clear alpine morning. From the veranda of the lodge the peaks of nearby mountains were lit up by the low sun, and a thin blanket of low cloud hugged the valley. The clouds seemed close enough to touch.

I started picking my way down the mountain. Once again the route was actually a piste, though without snow obviously. Gradually trees began to appear, and once I passed the bottom of the lower chairlift, the slopes became thickly wooded. I spent the rest of the morning walking back to Cortina, a trip of about 12km.

Just before reaching the outskirts of Cortina, I emerged from the trees, and found the roads surprisingly busy. Not with commuters or holidaymakers though – these roads were the playground of the super-rich. Lotuses, Jaguars and lots of motorbikes shot past with no regard for the speed limits, and made sharp turns frighteningly close to the sheer edge. Just after I crossed the road, two Lotus Elises came speeding round the corner side by side, apparently racing.

I lazed around in the afternoon, feeling slightly battered and bruised, but triumphant nonetheless. I spent three hours in a street café, watching the world go by, had two very expensive orange juices, spent 15 very expensive minutes on the internet and declined a tempting (but of course very expensive) trip up the mountain on the other side of Cortina.

I concluded that I’d be lucky to leave Cortina with any money at all. When I got to the bus station for the one-hour trip back to Calalzo, the ticket office was closed. In fact, now I came to think about it, everything was closed. I actually found myself surprised that there were still places that completely shut down on Sundays. Anyway, this left me with no way to buy a ticket. On the bus the driver didn’t speak English, but at least I had a go.

“Calalzo?”
“Si”

That was it. No “that’ll be €4.50 plus a fifth of your house and your first born child”, or some equally extortionate price, just “Si”. I gave up and sat down, not wanting to argue with a free bus trip, especially since I had spent so much dosh already.

Journey 7: Cortina to Rome
2 legs, 700km, 4 hr 27 min. Average speed: 63kph
Origin/Destination	Departs	Arrives	Carrier	My Rating
Cortina d’Ampezzo Calalzo-Pieve di Cd.	19:45	20:45	DolomitiBus	(Bus)
Calalzo-Pieve di Cd. Roma Tiburtina	20:55	07:08	TrenItalia

On the train I had the entire six-person compartment to myself. Made quite a change from being surrounded by Finnish civil engineers, and I was soon on my way to Rome.