The Dolomites, Italy: Europe's best mountain biking

21.07.2023 - 07:43 / roughguides.com / Greg Dickinson / Winter Olympics

With a little courage, a lot of leg-power and some encouragement from an exuberant Italian guide, Greg Dickinson discovers some of Europe's best mountain biking in the Dolomites Italy.

“Do you suffer from vertigo?” Paolo is straight faced, but it’s hard to take him seriously in his patchwork yellow and pink sunhat.

I tell him I’m alright with heights, and can’t resist asking why. He hops on his mountain bike and pedals ahead, leaving it a few seconds before calling back “It’s a surprise!"

I met up with mountain expert Paolo in Cortina d’Ampezzo, a couple of hours north of Venice by coach. During the winter months skiers and snowboarders descend on this glamorous resort town – put on the map as the setting of Roger Moore’s epic Bond ski chase in For Your Eyes Only (or for hosting the 1956 Winter Olympics, depending on who you’re talking to).

For the rest of the year it’s an increasingly popular base for mountain and road biking in the UNESCO-protected Dolomites. with a number of “bike hotels” in town, such as Hotel Villa Argentina, offering storage, maintenance and massage therapy for cyclists.

My two-day adventure started with some news: many of the area’s cable cars and chairlifts – used by cyclists over the summer – had closed a week earlier than scheduled after an uncharacteristically rainy season in the region.

Paolo revealed this with a good-humoured shrug, his concentration fixed on a map as he figured out a revised route. It was an overcast morning, but occasionally the clouds parted to unveil a splintering mountaintop, hundreds of metres higher than expected, and I wondered what on earth I’d got myself into.

Dolomites skiing becomes Dolomites cycling during summer months © Shutterstock

On my bike, the early, knee-straining hours along forest roads are tough, but as we gain altitude I find Paolo’s carefree attitude to be as uplifting as the regular espresso breaks we take.

And I’m not the only one enamoured by the man. Just about every driver that passes us honks their horn and yells “Ciao, Paolino!”, he’s on backslapping terms with the owners of all of the mountain rifugios (mountain refuges), and even receives a clean high five from one passing jogger.

I soon reap the benefits of his popularity myself when a moustachioed gent named Fausto beckons us off our bikes and into his falconry headquarters.

We’ve caught him between his 11am and 3pm displays, and I’m thankful to rest my legs for 20 minutes as we sit and watch him fling birds of prey into the deep pine valley behind him.

We’re soon back on the road, and after ascending over 1000 metres the mountain biking finally begins.

For the first single track run I’m sat down, with all four fingers clutching the brakes as I dodge football-sized boulders