At the exit of our hotel in Trento, we found the Mayor of the city, Alessandro Andreatta, that decided to give us his regards and best wishes for our next stages and for the entire project. He was happy to stress again the content of his letter, that we received last evening, and the commitment of Trento to cope with climate change as well as the need of a role of leadership of EU on it.
We started our stage with a cloudy sky and a still warm temperature for this month. We moved quickly to the famous bike path of the “Adige”, one of the most important Italian bicycle path, that is highly congested during summer, which confirms that where nice infrastructure exists a lot of people use it.
The landscape was very nice and we took our pleasurable way between two shoulders of mountains in the direction of Bolzano (Bozen).
We really enjoyed the possibility to ride without the risk to find cars on our way that is always a reason of worries and risk for a group of almost 30 people. The perfect condition to have a chat together with other members of the group, exchanging views and ideas in relation to what we learnt in the previous conferences or sharing experiences, idea or simply pleasantries.
The only interruption was due the voice “bici, destra!” (bicycle, right!) running as an eco from the top to the back of the group to indicate the non frequent arrival of cyclists on the opposite direction. This forced the group to streamline in order to facilitate the passage of these cyclists, but after that with a perfect resilient behavior everybody moves in the original position to keep talking.
After lunch we said goodbye to Germana and Stefano that moved to catch the train to come back home and when the bike path arrived to the deviation of Bolzano (Bozen) we done the same with Susanna, because even for her tomorrow will be a working day.
We turned now in the direction of Merano on a bike path very smooth where was an extra pleasure to ride.
When we were around 10 km from the arrival we saw a very important rider for us coming from the opposite direction: the Mayor of Merano, Paul Rösch, that joined us to give his personal welcome.
At 3.00 pm we already arrived in Merano where a group of around 30 riders occupied the street playing all the available bells to announce our arrival.
In the city hall we had a welcome drink and a more comfortable exchange of regards. Here we met Gianpaolo and Roberto, two more riders that will ride with us towards Bruxells.The arrival in the first part of the afternoon allow us also to have a shower before our evening event. After that we had a walk with the Mayor, together with the Alderwoman of the Environment and Mobility Office, Madeleine Rohrer, and the Responsible of the Technical Office, Bruno Montali, that showed us some initiatives to improve in a safe way the use of the bicycle in the city.
Finally we joined in the city hall together with Zeno Oberkofler, the representative of “Fridays 4 Future” from Bolzano, for an interesting chat on what Merano is doing for climatechange and which are the possible future evolution. The main area of action at the moment is the improvement of energy efficiency in the public buildings where important investments are needed, but also important savings are possible.
After dinner Maura and Gianmarco shook our hands because their time with Ride With Us was over…at least for 2019.
