Three Days in the Dolomites

The Dolomites have a way of making you feel small without making you feel insignificant. Every turn in the trail offers another impossible wall of pale stone, another valley that looks painted, another reason to stop walking and just stand there with your mouth slightly open.

We spent three days on the Alta Via trails, sleeping in rifugios, eating pasta with strangers, and learning that the Italian approach to mountain walking is fundamentally different from the British one. Less suffering. More wine.

Day One: Tre Cime

The Tre Cime circuit is the most photographed walk in the Dolomites, and for good reason. The three towers rise like broken teeth from the ridge, sheer and pale and absurd. You've seen the photos a thousand times, and it still stops you.

We started early, before the coach parties arrived. The trail loops around the back of the towers, giving you every angle, every light condition. Morning shadow. Midday glare. The warm side-light that comes just before the sun drops behind the western ridge.

The Italian approach to mountain walking is fundamentally different from the British one. Less suffering. More wine.

Day Two: Descent into Val Fiscalina

The second day took us down into Val Fiscalina, through alpine meadows thick with gentians and edelweiss. The gradient was steep enough to make my knees complain, but the valley floor was worth the descent: a flat, green world of cowbells and clear streams.

We ate lunch at a farmstead that served fresh buttermilk and dark bread. The kind of meal that reminds you food doesn't need to be complicated to be good.

Day Three: The Ridge Walk

The final day was the hardest and the best. A ridge walk that followed the spine of the range, exposed on both sides, with views into Austria on one side and Italy on the other. The wind was strong enough to lean into.

There was a section with fixed cables — via ferrata style — that required both hands and a willingness not to look down. I looked down. The valley was a thousand metres below, green and quiet and very far away.

We finished the walk at a small car park where a van sold espresso and panini. I sat on a wall, sunburnt and tired, drinking the best coffee of my life. Not because it was good coffee — it was fine — but because I'd walked for it.