Once we eventually settle in for the night, having foraged for food at a nearby garage (surprisingly good by the way!) I have to rather sharply remind Marc that once I put my eye mask on it is “sssh time” and so he needs to stop talking now please. Unfortunately it doesn’t on this occasion mean I sleep any better but at least we are now 100% clear on the rules (which have been in place since day one but ignored…just saying!)

As usual we get up and out early, but it’s especially important this morning because we know we have our hugest challenge ahead of us today. Before we set off the mystery of the missing bottle opener is solved when I put my cycle shoes on…obviously placed there for safe keeping.

We revisit the garage emporium to stock up on supplies (water, bananas, cold coffees) and head off. On a day like the one in prospect what you want is absolute certainty about where you are heading and so of course within 100 yards of leaving the Garmin is a bit of mess and can’t make a decision about where it wants to take us.

We know from experience that cycling in the Alps is not to be messed with and we stop and have a TMAAT conflab. We agree to carry on up the valley (ignoring the Garmin) as it’s pretty clear there is a road, albeit a busy one. When we pause again in a couple of miles we obviously look quite lost and another cyclist asks us where we heading ….when we tell him he confirms that there is a cycle path all the way to Klosters and then we can pick up the road to Davos and from their we can head up the Fluelapass, our mission for the day….whoop whoop! I should probably also mention he looked at us like we are insane but we are quite used to that by now.

The first 10 miles or so up the valley are, unsurprisingly, all up but to be honest pretty manageable. The next 8 up to Klosters prove much harder and the promised cycle path is thankfully real but basically a gravel track (and it now makes sense, having changed the settings some 400 miles back, why the Garmin firmly said “no” at the beginning of the day). Cycling up anything with 25kgs of stuff is pretty character building at the best of times, but doing it on gravel is ridiculous and on one small but insanely steep section we actually have to get off and walk….the first time ever in over 5000 miles of TMAAT adventures.

When we do eventually arrive at Klosters we have already been on the move for 4 hours so stop for a (very expensive)  coffee and pastry pitstop and we pick up some lunch to have later. We then push on and up towards Davos turning East just before the town to start the huge climb to the Fluelapass.

If what we had climbed so far could be categorised as tough it now becomes brutal and insane….we literally grind our way forward sometimes only a few 100 metres at a time before we have to stop and recover and it goes on and on and on and on. Every time we see what looks like it might be the summit ahead of us we turn another corner and see the road snaking ever further up.

During one of the many pauses at the side of ride slumped over the handlebars an Italian camper van stops along side and a man leans out the window to check we are ok and asks if we need anything. When we thank him and say we are fine (relatively speaking) he tells us he is stopping at the summit and will have hot fresh coffee if we would like it.

We carry on the excruciatingly slow and painful grind towards the top still having to stop every few metres. After a full 9 hours of effort we eventually cover the paltry (in TMAAT terms) 34 miles from our campsite to the very top of the pass and the  slightly less paltry 7000 feet of climbing. At 2348 metres Fluelapass is also the highest that TMAAT have ever been. Fair to say this up there as one of our most massive achievements….so of course we celebrate and yes alright we blub a bit.

As we start to celebrate the guy who had earlier checked on us on the way (we now know as Nicola) came over to us with a plate of Salmon sandwiches and invited us to his van….sorry his very “warm” van which given it is now bitter outside  is super appealing. Being British, and on top of that being me, the unexpected kindness of others is often a strange experience and a little difficult to accept but we do manage to overcome our politeness and gratefully get in the van.

Nicola his wife Chiara and “la famiglia Pugno” then proceed to look after us so well offering us all kinds of food and drink and coffee and pulling things out of a seemingly endless number of cupboards. It’s one of the most amazing and heartwarming acts of genuine kindness I think I have ever experienced….if you are reading now Nicola, Chiara and family “Grazie mille per la tua gentilezza. lo ricorderemo sempre.”

It’s quite an effort to say goodbye given it’s now raining outside but we do have to press on to our campsite for the night so after some extended “arriverdercis” we head off down the other side of the pass.

The descent is super exhilarating and now very wet and incredibly cold and so we just keeping pedalling away desperate to get to the end of the day and to get warm. ….which of course we do.

Once showered and changed we head into town (Zernez if you are interested) for some dinner and on the way back the clouds clear just enough for us to get a view of the monster we have just tamed. That my friends is the Fluela Schwahorn and we just crushed it!

It has been the most shattering of days and given that with the rescheduled ferry shenanigans we now have an additional day of flex to play with we chat over pizza and beer how we might use that to our advantage. Neither of us are full of joy that tomorrow is supposed to be the second part of our Alps challenge…..the massively intimidating Umbrail Pass.