Sunrise on the mountains at 07:00 sharp!

A thick coating of ice on the windscreen.

Good news is that heater worked and water wasn't frozen.

But a cloudless day in the mountains really is priceless.

Italy is a north south sort of country.

I guess it stems from the river flows from the mountains to the sea, then the roads followed the rivers before bridge engineering developed.

Traveling east west is not the natural way.

Add to that we are staying close to the mountains, rather than on to the industrialised plain on which sits Milan, and we had an interesting time deciding on the route let alone navigating.

Just another of the facilities which were closed.

Keep it out in the cold for too long and there's a bit of condensation round the edges of the lens.

Our hands were a little cold also!

The cable car was closed.

We passed this way in 1997 with Jennifer and Rachael. The cable car was open then and we had a memorable day riding up and walking down.

The things we make our kids do!

As well as all the activity from Roman times onwards there was quite a lot of WWI fought in this area.

The Via Ferago (think that's right) is a track which follows some of the way the Italian troops moved around the mountains. Reminiscent of the Chinese plank roads.

It looked like a modern version of a Haflinger / Pinzgauer. A central tube with all the driving gear hung off it.

We couldn't see a brand name.

The restaurants were all closed.

In particular to Fausto Coppi ("Il Camionissimo".

We are fairly certain we wouldn't enjoy trying to cycle up the pass.

And a bit of religion thrown in.

Most campsites are closed from around mid October to January. Between the summer hiking season and winter ski season.

The weather we are enjoying is unusual.

Something not quite right as we thought they were evergreen.

There's around 100 panels. Not sure what size but that's probably more than 8kW (lots).

It was getting dark as we headed up another pass.

In the dark we'd noticed a couple of motorhomes already there so simply joined them.

We heard a few others arrive after us.

Obviously what Italians do on a Sunday! The motorhomers were also there for the skiing. But we did learn that motorhomes staying overnight in ski field car parks is acceptable, at least at this time of year.

We've both tried skiing in our younger years. I enjoyed it for a while but its not something I went out of my way for.

We'd wondered what the machine noise we could hear all night was.

Some of it was a tractor grooming the snow. The sort of whistling noise was a snow making machine.

What a strange thing to do to a peaceful mountain.

The lake runs more or less north south.

We wanted to go west!

We can tell the gps which places we want to go via but not which roads we want to take. Although it does at least allow us to say "no toll roads".

Our gps is annoying in that it tends to take us through the middle of towns rather than the easier to traverse by-pass.

This time it was nice to drive along the waterfront.

Lecco of course has a bridge which meant we could carry on westwards.

It seems that putting old air force aircraft on posts for display is fashionable in more than one country.

Our truck is 2.1m wide, plus the width of the mirrors.

Apart from overtaking the hard part from a right hand drive vehicle in a left hand drive country is seeing what's coming round the right hand corners.

Getting through some of the small towns and villages and across the rivers was interesting. Despite the gps at one time we were not sure where we were or where we were headed.

We stopped to ask in one village. For a few moments we were simply lost for words. What question to ask? How to start? So with silly grin and a hint of embarrassment I climbed out of the cab with map in hand.

After much discussion among the four people the directions were brilliant. 

We continue to be baffled as to why people feel they have to apologise to us for their poor English. We figured we were the problem not understanding the local language, the people or the country.

Haven't described it well, and impossible to photograph, but it was another of those delightful encounters with total strangers that we've had.

A night in a truck stop next to the Autostrada.

Surprisingly peaceful and a good night's sleep. Just like Asia really.