Three borders, one week

Every morning started the same way: a map spread across the bonnet of the van, coffee still too hot, and a plan that was really only a first guess. In the Julian Alps the weather decides the route, and the clouds rarely sit where the forecast says.

Home for the week was the upper Val Canale, a quiet valley that most people only drive through on the way to somewhere else. Small family guesthouses, breakfast before the shuttle, a set dinner and a cold local beer at night. Nothing fancy, and exactly right.

Limestone above, beech forest below

Up high it’s open grass and white rock, with the walls of Monte Canin always somewhere in view. Lower down the trails drop into beech and pine: roots, leaves and soft dirt, the kind of riding where you stop thinking and start flowing.

Kanin, above Sella Nevea, is the moonscape: pale rock, almost no green, and lines you pick stone by stone. Around Malborghetto the trails change character every few hundred metres. And under the Plöckenpass, on the Austrian border, the riding turns slow and technical, with the north face of Monte Coglians filling the view whenever you dare to look up.

The small things in between

A guide’s best work often happens off the bike: a crouched conversation about brake levers, a hint on where to look in the next turn, and the decision to stop for lunch before anyone asks.

Why we go back

Friuli is still one of the quiet corners of the Alps. No lift queues, no bike-park crowds, long descents you have to yourselves. Seven riders, two guides and a week of mountains most people never hear of. That’s the kind of trip we like to plan.