Rock Drawings in Valcamonica and Fiavé-Lago Carera
Plan this ride
Recorded distance
307 km
Riding-time estimate
5 h 48
Journey
Recorded itinerary
Distance and timing basis
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Breno it runs 307 km to Breno; allow about 5 h 48 of riding. It goes by way of Parco Pluritematico, Fiavé-Lago Carera and back through Parco Pluritematico. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,100 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Scenic road chapters
Passo di Vivione
31 km that neither climbs nor drops much. The road settles into the ground rather than fighting it — this is where a day makes up time without anyone trying. Third and fourth, and very little else.
Rider note
Check the pass is open before you commit to it.
Chapter facts
Length
29 km
Pass
Passo di Vivione
Parco Pluritematico → Fiavé-Lago Carera
Water arrives beside the road and stays for 55 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go. Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did.
Chapter facts
Length
124 km
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Rock Drawings in Valcamonica
Valcamonica is a long, deep Alpine valley running north from Lake Iseo towards the Adamello and Tonale mountains, and for something like eight thousand years people have been scratching pictures on its rocks. The Camunni, an Iron Age tribe, carved most of them, but the tradition began in the Neolithic and carried on through the Roman period and into the Middle Ages. The result is one of the largest collections of petroglyphs in the world, well over a hundred thousand figures by the common estimate, and in 1979 it became the first site in Italy to be given World Heritage status.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Rock Drawings in Valcamonica is where the day begins. Next is Parco Pluritematico.
2. Parco Pluritematico
Valcamonica holds one of the largest collections of prehistoric rock carvings in the world, some three hundred thousand figures pecked into the smooth glacier-polished rocks of the valley over thousands of years, from hunters and deer to warriors, ploughs, houses and mysterious symbols. It was the first Italian site to be listed by UNESCO, in 1979. In the upper valley, near Sonico, a few kilometres south of Edolo, a multi-themed park around the rocks of Còren de le Fate, the fairies' rock, offers carvings, nature trails and an insight into the life of the valley.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Parco Pluritematico comes up about 29 km into the recorded legs. Next is Fiavé-Lago Carera.
3. Fiavé-Lago Carera
Lago Carera is barely a lake any more: a damp, reedy hollow and peat bog below the village of Fiavè, in the Giudicarie valleys of western Trentino. Yet in the Bronze Age this was a lakeshore crowded with houses on wooden piles, and the waterlogged peat preserved their timbers, tools and food remains for three and a half thousand years. Fiavè is one of the pile-dwelling sites of the transnational World Heritage Site covering prehistoric settlements around the Alps, and a museum in the village shows what came out of the bog.