We spent the night at a friendly, albeit quirky, hotel in Primolano. The town offered few diversions. We walked across the road before dinner and took a tour of the train station. It was a small, but cheerful station. It had a platform and a machine to validate one’s ticket, should one choose to take a train to either Trento or Bassano del Grappa.

Having seen the highlight of the town, we spent some time sitting in front of the hotel, watching the occasional car drive up the road to the roundabout and then—anticipation builds—either continue on the road toward Pianello, or take a full spin around the roundabout and head back toward its point of origin. How many hours have I spent dreaming of a time to come when I will while away the hours, sitting at a table in front of an European hotel, nursing a glass of wine and watching the world pass by?

I was living the dream.

Bicyclists filled the other rooms in the hotel. I would like to assert that their exuberant clomping up and down the stairs, and their loud voices kept me awake all night, but that would be a terrible untruth. After our evening repast, I flopped onto the bed (a little past 8:30), and received no further communiques from the world around me until roughly 5:30 AM the next day. Insomnia is one ailment that long distance hiking sorts out in a hurry. I slept the sleep of the virtuously exhausted.

Our hotel's free breakfast operated on the “you snooze, you lose” model. We have enjoyed several elegant, quiet breakfasts in the places we have stayed. There has always been an abundance of speck, cheese, rolls, yogurts, and other palate-tempters. This morning, however, we were competing with eight bikers, and the food vanished quickly. Why, the speck plate was nearly empty before I could elbow my way through the pack. There was no replenishment of the food on offer: once it was gone, it was gone. I was able to secure some yogurt, a single slice of cheese, and a couple of buns. Twenty minutes later, after the bikers had locusted the buffet and departed, two older men arrived. They eyed the solitary scrap of bread with woeful and slightly bitter eyes.

But the coffee was good.

Since we faced a delightfully short stage, we departed late today. Back on the bike trail, we headed east. Saturday multiplied the throngs of bicyclists. Fueled up on speck and coffee, the riders who hadn't disturbed me the previous evening now took their revenge. They howled past in raucous swarms. Their high passing speeds and sudden appearances made for some uncomfortable walking. An inadvertent sideways lurch might throw you into the path of one of these aluminum pests.

Then to make the walking even more adventurous, the trail narrowed and slithered around the base of a cliff on an elevated walkway. A rusty canopy of tired chain link fence covered this section, the first line of defense against boulders plummeting from the mountain above. The wire mesh did nothing to stop the waterfall that hid around a corner and proved quite a surprise for the bikers flying down the path. A cool spritzer on a warm day.

Eventually our steps led us to BiciGrill Cornale. We decided to pull in and have a quick espresso, as we were well ahead of our schedule. We met the owner of the place, Romano, and he was so taken by the fact that we were hiking the Via, that he insisted on taking a selfie with us. Turnabout is fair play.

Continuing on the way, we encountered a man who seemed to be working on some sort of graveyard. We stopped to talk to him, and I was forced to employ my dubious Italian. His name was Germano, and as best as I could make out, he and three friends were building a memorial to the men who died during WWI on nearby Mount Grappa.

In 1917–18, the Italian and Austrian armies fought three brutal battles in the mountain range that shadows the Brenta River. Mount Grappa, which stands in a commanding position over the region, was the focus of this intense conflict. Thousands of men were killed on both sides, and today there is a memorial on the peak of the mountain where a mass grave holds the remains of more than 12,000 unidentified soldiers.

Germano and his friends were building a small cemetery beside the trail, in a flat meadow filled with rows of gravestones. I could not figure out if eventually some of the remains will be brought down from the mountain to this place beside the river, or if the stones are a simple commemoration, a memorial to remind us of the senselessness of war. My fractious Italian does not always stretch to the finer points of conversational inquiry. In either case, Germano and his crew were happy to pose for a photo with their project.

We crossed a rickety suspension bridge into town and made our way to our evening abode. We will sleep tonight in the shadow of Mount Grappa.

Today's distance: 9.4 KM Total distance: 268.86 KM

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