The nearest one climbs up from the Maggia side to Fusio, a stone village at the head of Val Lavizzara, and continues to the Sambuco dam, a curved concrete wall holding back a long reservoir. It is about as far from the bustle of the Gotthard as you can get while staying within a few kilometres of it.
For most riders on the Grand Tour, though, this part of Ticino is about Airolo and the Gotthard. Airolo sits at the southern foot of the pass, where the Tremola, the old cobbled road, comes down the mountain in a series of tight hairpins stacked one above the other. It is one of the most famous stretches of road in the Alps, paved with granite setts in the mid-twentieth century over a nineteenth-century route, and riding it is a rattling, slow and unforgettable experience. The modern road over the pass, wider and smoother, runs alongside, and the road tunnel underneath carries most of the traffic.
The Gotthard has been one of the key routes across the Alps since the thirteenth century, when the Schöllenen gorge on the northern side was made passable. Airolo has a museum dedicated to the history of the pass and the people who built its roads and tunnels, many of them Italian workers who died in accidents and of disease during the construction of the railway tunnel in the 1870s. A monument at the station remembers them.
Back in this high country, the weather is the main concern. Snow lies late on the ridges, storms build quickly on summer afternoons, and the minor roads close in winter. The roads up into the side valleys are narrow, steep and sometimes rough, with little traffic and few places to pass. Wildlife is plentiful: chamois, marmots and the occasional golden eagle. For fuel and food, Airolo is the nearest village with services, and Faido, further down the Leventina, has more. For a bigger town, Biasca is about thirty kilometres away. The Val Lavizzara side has small villages with bars, but plan your fuel carefully if you head that way.