The online brochure had “Stroll” in large letters in the headline. “Mountains made easy”, read the line below, as though this new trip to the Italian Dolomites were a sort of hiking-for-dummies guide. The message was clear: should you have any reservations about walking in one of the most beautiful mountain ranges in the world, we’ll take care of them. I showed it to my partner, Hayley.
Among the things we agree to disagree on (how often to clean the bathroom, say, or whether supermarket shopping represents a chore) is walking — or more accurately, what constitutes a relaxing walk. Where I see rough-and-ready fun trails she sees hairy-chested, unrelaxing hikes. But what she wanted after several frantic months at work was to potter. If she could do that somewhere beautiful with a spa, so much the better.
“See?” I said, showing her the website. “This looks nice.” She frowned. “Won’t we still have to walk up into the mountains, though? That’s a hike,” she stressed. “And how good are the paths? If the views are that good I don’t want to have to watch where my feet are going the whole time.”
The question of ascents was easy enough to answer. In its notes, Inntravel explains that among its eight self-guided walks, the routes in the mountains use cable cars and funiculars “to avoid strenuous climbs”. Nor is it kidding about “stroll”: the walks range in distance from one to five miles and it reckons that none takes more than three hours — so, plenty of spa time left there.
The paths bit was less straightforward. In truth I had no idea whether these were broad, even routes or the faint trails of alpine goats. But I fancied a coolcation — I wanted to swap the gas-mark-5 coasts of the Med for lofty landscapes in the first flush of summer; to breathe cool, clean air in the attic of Europe. So I fibbed. “Oh, the paths will be fine,” I promised breezily — sturdy trainers were all we’d need.
Advertisement
And so here we are, travelling to the Dolomites with our trainers, taking the new flight from Gatwick to Bolzano. (Not just any flight, but one on a sleek propeller plane with only a few passengers and free drinks — the sort to remind you of the reasons you once enjoyed air travel.) Our hotel, La Perla, is in Ortisei, in the Val Gardena and about an hour’s drive from the airport. It has spotless, simple rooms with geraniums blooming on balconies. Its wellness centre has therapists, steam rooms and saunas, plus a relaxation room with beds beside racks of hay — they use it for hay bathing, to improve circulation, metabolism and make you generally feel terrific. From its infinity pool you can look over hills speckled by wildflowers to alpine chalets spread around a church with a red, onion-dome spire.
Lovely. But what about my mountains? Mulling over the route notes I see a trail across the summit of Resciesa — three miles in two hours: definitely a stroll.
My ears pop on the funicular up through pine forest from Ortisei. We step out at 2,200m (7,218ft) into the crisp air of Puez-Odle Nature Park within the Dolomites world heritage site. It’s the least sweaty mountain ascent this hiker has ever made. Our route winds through stunted pines, past streams channelled into log troughs, to alpine pasture. And that’s where we abruptly stop.
“Wow,” Hayley says. “Blimey,” I concur. Opposite us the pinnacle of a mighty mountain thrusts into the sky like the giant hand of some ancient granitic god. Sassolungo is the showstopper peak seen on Dolomites posters, but trust me, those images don’t come close to the reality of it.
The next hour is terrific. Lines of peaks peel away to more peaks. Far below a chapel is framed by pine boughs; hamlets stand loosely scattered around churches. On the blogosphere, hikers bang on about the satisfaction and wondrous views you get with big ascents into the upper Dolomites. Reader, they are wrong — in no way can the scenery have been improved on what we saw.
Advertisement
Also, the path really is fine and Hayley approves — phew! “It allows your mind to expand, not to think about your feet,” she says. “This feels like a balm after the office.”
Outside the sort of wooden cabin you see in miniature on cuckoo clocks, holidaymakers are drinking in views of Sassolungo along with glasses of beer. We order bowls of barley soup with dumplings and settle in. When the skies bruise, the mountain takes on the look of a painting by Caspar David Friedrich.
Luis Trenker would have understood that. Ortisei-born, he was the Tyrolean John Wayne — a film star of the Twenties and Thirties who played rugged, plain-speaking outdoorsmen. A keen mountaineer, he spent the post-war decades promoting Val Gardena as a holiday destination, for which he remains a local hero. “What the Matterhorn is for Switzerland, [Sassolungo] is for us, only more beautiful, more gothic,” he said.
We go for a close-up the next day, taking a gondola lift to Alpe di Siusi, the largest alpine plateau. It is an undulating carpet of green, dotted with shingle-roofed shepherds’ huts, walled by Sassolungo and a sawtooth of snowy peaks. A viewpoint outside the gondola terminus is only slightly spoilt by a crush of selfie-takers and a bloke flying a drone that sounds like an angry wasp.
Our walk notes usher us away towards quieter paths that loop like doodles across the plateau. I’m slightly ashamed to admit that the hiker in me silently grumbles about the occasional use of tarmac for footpaths — easy to walk on, but so ugly — because if ever there were a location in which you don’t want to watch your footing, this is it. The striped green, white and blue flag of the Ladin people who originate in the Dolomites was apparently inspired by the pastures, snow and skies here, and here it all is, spread out in scenery of such improbable, heart-stopping, bell-pealing beauty that it looks like a pastoral utopia generated by AI.
Advertisement
You can see why Austria was reluctant to give up the place. South Tyrol was ceded to the young Italian nation in 1919 (Italians call it Alto Adige), but it still hasn’t fully reconciled itself to the idea. For holidaymakers it’s a Bogof deal — two cultures and two languages in one trip (three, actually — some menus are written in Italian, German and Ladin, derived from Roman soldiers’ Latin and persisting as part of the local culture).
On a day when low cloud roofs the valley, drifting up slopes like spun cotton, we take an old postal footpath from Ortisei. Wooden farmhouses sag picturesquely; crickets chirrup in wildflower meadows. An elderly chap in a Tyrolean felt hat with a feather in its band greets us in German — “Grüss Gott”, or “good day”.
Val Gardena probably remains a bit more Austrian than Italian, Gabriel Demetz tells us the next day near the village of Santa Cristina. We’ve paused on a pre-lunch walk — downhill from the head of Val Gardena, taking a former railway line above roofs and pasture — in the shop of his wife, Sonia, a master woodcarver. Gabriel explains how Val Gardena’s carving tradition boomed in the late 1700s as a nice earner for farmers during the winter. Today, Christmas markets provide their biggest selling opportunites — on the shop’s shelves the Nativity scene is set beneath Tyrolean barns.
“There are valleys near here that don’t want to speak Italian at all,” Gabriel says. “Although the valleys here are Ladin first, rather than Austrian or Italian.”
Our days settle into a pleasing rhythm: breakfast, stroll, lunch then back to the hotel for the spa and — why not? — free afternoon cakes. Each morning I sit on our balcony to watch cloud spin from a slab of mountain opposite. Finally, I check a map — it’s called Seceda and, though 2,519m high, it’s in our walk routes.
Advertisement
It takes two cable cars to get us there. In truth Seceda is rubbish as a walking spot — the path takes us barely 20 minutes each way. What a place, though: a deep-green bowl ringed by ice-clawed rock that broods magnificently beneath leaden skies — less a landscape than a realm.
In later life Trenker warned of the potential damage of tourism in the Dolomites, urging authorities to preserve “the tranquillity and magic of loneliness”, and I understand that. It’s the hiker’s idea that heights must be earned; that only those who have slogged uphill for hours should reap the scenic rewards. But — and I don’t want to come over too hippy here — people only protect what they love, and they only love what they know. There’s no chance that we would be at Seceda without its cable cars and strollers’ paths.
We sit on a slope, watching shafts of sunlight speed across the plateau and a flock of Alpine choughs spiral upwards before scattering like rags in a breeze. “It’s such a privilege to be here,” Hayley says.
And do you know what? She’s right.
James Stewart was a guest of Inntravel, which has seven nights’ half-board from £1,255pp, including route notes and a local transport pass (inntravel.co.uk). Fly to Bolzano
Become a subscriber and, along with unlimited digital access to The Times and The Sunday Times, you can enjoy a collection of travel offers and competitions curated by our trusted travel partners, especially for Times+ members
Advertisement
Sign up for our Times Travel newsletter and follow us on Instagram and X
