Return to Il Pin
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Nobody lives in Il Pin all through the year these days. At just over 1,500m above sea-level it's little more than a handful of houses, perching far above the winter snowline. With a twisting, beaten single-gauge road running in and out, no snow plough or gritting lorry ever gets that far. So when the first falls of winter come, that's it. You're either in or out. Few people have the stomach for that kind of extreme, insular mountain living anymore. The world has moved on and the village is little more than a collection of summer houses that spend the winter empty, shuttered up against the weather.
Yet there is something special in the hills around this dying hamlet: trails. In an area that has been used by mountain bikers for more than twenty years now, the riding around Il Pin is still some of the best you'll find anywhere. The last few months have been spent nervously watching the snowline. Can you get a van up there yet? It's a long way out to get a vehicle stuck and on this side of the Atlantic, few of us have big 4x4s to play with. So it's been a waiting game... this week the time seemed right, local enduro racers Manuel Ducci and Valentina Macheda came up and we pointed the van up towards the big mountains.
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 The lower valley has been rideable for a few months, but as you head towards the bigger terrain the weather gets less stable and the snowline has been creeping back down again through the nights. |
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| With everything in the van, we headed out to see what the conditions were like. |
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| Good was the answer, the ground was dry underfoot and the snow only clung in the darkest shadows. |
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| The trail starts just above Il Pin. |
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| Dropping down from the village. |
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| "The cliff face starts there!" |
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| This cliff... Manuel ain't worried. |
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| Below the village you find the remains of the homes of the people who lived even further out. Most of them are little more than ruins now. Some have been empty for centuries, but their stone walls remain, a testament to the quality of the craftsmenship of those who built them. |
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| Monte Saccarelo towers over the whole area. |
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| As you descend you come to another deserted hamlet, Borniga. Although it's not quite as high, it's just as isolated. |
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| From Borniga it's out on down through the meadows and back into the pine trees... |
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| ...but we ran into something that looked like too much fun to miss. Photos don't really do justice to how steep this is. There's no run-out at the bottom either, so somehow you need to try and keep control of the bike on the constantly-shifting surface. |
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| After a couple of runs on the slippery slate face, Manuel was feeling the pain of hiking back up, but there's always enough energy for another go, right? |
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| I'm not entirely sure Valentina was impressed with us messing around. |
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| Eventually the trail works down to Realdo, which is what passes for a bustling community in these parts. They even have a shop and (an amazing) restaurant. |
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| And as the sun set over the valley we were done... |
A big thank you to Manuel and Valentina for their time.
www.life-cycle.eu
www.rivierabike.co.uk
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dv65 0.050115
I've so got to drag my arse away from Jeremy Kyle and sample some of that Italian-trail-rustica again!
You still based in Molini Matt?
More of this sort of stuff per-lease.....
Rant over, sorry 'bout that.