BT xi - Day 9

Day 9 - The long way round
After breakfast discussions we decided that the fog and slush, although improving would mean that we would chicken out from the Stelvio in favour of some low level passes and some autostrada. That is to say if you call an Italian motorway, 'chickening out'  While some uk motorway driving can be done in a 'brain out' way, not so the Italian model, it requires FULL attention.
The low passes were highly enjoyable and entertaining with some of the best road surfaces we have seen in Italy, not that they had much competition!
Our run took us through the town of Aprika, where the Pentland Hills ski team once took a notable third place in the Italian national team championships despite only having 3 1/2 ski boots, the other half having been eaten by a mountain goat in the night.
The motorway was pure madness done at silly speeds.  To go any slower would certainly result in death!
My closest shave was at the services and not even on the bike!  We were sitting in the car park perched on the crash barrier (see pic) when a car drove into the next bay and the barrier 2 feet away, at speed !!!  A handy ex health and safety inspecter said that it could have caused serious injury, to him, laughing so much.
Things were going well, perhaps too well when we got into a monster stau in Innsbruck (right under the ski jump).  We were stuck for so long that we started running out of fuel and had to divert off the toll motorway into Innsbruck.  The route back on took us a full junction back into the stau.
At one point in the day out trip computers were giving is a tank range of over 300 miles. The stau was so bad that we were indicating only 140 miles for our full tanks.
Instead of the civilised arrival time estimated we didn't get to the hotel until almost 7 only to find that the convenient cafe within short walking range had closed, so it was back on the bikes for the first schnitzel of the trip, but not for John, he had the salad.
Tomorrow the Grossglockner ?