A Solo Ride Through Lago Maggiore's Mountains | Tour de Pasta Stage 2

Stage 2 of the Tour de Pasta started the only way a Lago Maggiore ride should — before the day-trippers were awake. Rolling out of Baveno with the lake still glassy and the pink granite quarries catching the first light, then along the sandy curve of Feriolo, this was a quiet 20 minutes that turned into three hours of some of the toughest, most rewarding roads on the western shore. Baveno itself is worth a mention before the legs even warm up. Its quarries have been cut since the 16th century, and that distinctive pink granite has ended up as far away as the colonnade of St Peter's Basilica in Rome and the columns of the Paris Opéra. Queen Victoria stayed here in 1879, at what's now Villa Branca, home of the Fernet-Branca family — so if the lakefront looked a little grand at 6am, that's why. From Feriolo the road tips upward through the Bieno climb and into the narrow valley above Aurano, where the switchbacks stack up fast and the lake disappears behind the trees. This whole flank of the mountain, from Aurano through Piancavallo, sits inside the old Cadorna Line — a network of military roads and trenches built between 1915 and 1918 to defend Italy against a feared invasion through neutral Switzerland. It was never fired on in anger. Fittingly, the general it's named after, Luigi Cadorna, was born just down the hill in Pallanza. The reward for the climbing comes hard and fast: Piancavallo throws open the whole of Lago Maggiore below, and Alpe Colle adds the Monte Rosa massif to the horizon, its glaciers sitting pale above the ridgelines. From there it's a fast descent to Premeno, a quiet former ski hamlet that makes a perfect breather before the road drops all the way back to lake level. The final stretch along the coast through Intra and Verbania/Pallanza closes the loop nicely — Intra was once the industrial engine of the lake, nicknamed the "Manchester of Verbano" for its 19th-century cotton mills, while Pallanza stayed the genteel resort town next door. The two didn't even share a name until 1939, when they were merged into Verbania by royal decree. Riding between them now, you'd never guess they spent centuries as rivals. Three hours, one proper mountain, and one of the best views in northern Italy. This is what the Tour de Pasta is all about. Follow the ride and the rest of the tour here: Instagram:   / when_in_doubt_cycle   Strava:   / strava   YouTube:    / @paolotagliaferri