The best memories are made in nature. Spending time slow-traveling with our toddler in the Dolomites was amazing. When researching for this trip, I stumbled upon someone making this comparison list: Himalaya – Andes – Dolomites. I had to laugh since I thought it was slightly exaggerated to put the Dolomites on that list… but after the trip, we fully agreed!
This post is split in 4 parts:
- The route through the dolomites
- Musts when cycling with kids
- Our daily routine while cycling
- A day-by-day detail of the itinerary
1. The route through the Dolomites
We traveled by bike a couple of times before, e.g. during our summer trip along the Rhine and through the Black Forest, but never with August. In this post, you’ll find some honest parenting details on how we survived this trip with our 2-year old.
Disclaimer 1: Doing this beautiful bicycle trip with a kid is ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE without an electric bike! There were many moments when we had a tough time cycling up the passes, even with help of our electric engine. At moments, we would get out of battery and sweat or hardly make it up the 1000m climb.
Disclaimer 2: we did not find a train alternative to get to the Dolomites with our two-year-old todler & two adults; two electric bicycles; a bike trailer and camping gear for all of us. Without a toddler and bike trailer it would have been possible to get to Bolsano and start cycling from there, so let me know if you are planning to do so!
For the route we practically merged the below two routes to create a loop and get back to where we left the car: Dolomites from West to East and Dolomites from East to West (returning via different valleys). We switched from the first to the second route in Cortina.
2. Musts when cycling with kids
If you’re planning to go on a cycling trip with a toddler, this is what you certainly need, on top of the usual kids’ stuff that you would take on any trip:
- Seat & bike trailer: Bring both a child seat in the front and a Thule bike trailer behind one of the bikes. We switched all the time since sitting in the front allows us to look around, sitting in the back is more for playing and taking a nap.
- Baby carrier: Take a light baby carrier backpack for short hikes in the mountains where the bike trailer cannot be used as a stroller
- Baby sleep tent: We put the little tent inside our tent at our feet at night time. He got so used to it that he sleeps as well in the tent as in his bed at home. See the third tip for more details on our previous post on kids on trains where we tell you a little more about the tent.
For the dutch speakers: one of our biggest inspirations was this podcast of Grensverleggers – two months through Sweden with kids
3. Our daily routine while cycling
While cycling, our typical day routine with 2-year-old August would be as follows:
- 5:30-6:30 Louis sneaks out of the room, goes running, reading a book, journaling
- 7:30-8:00 Wake up & milk for August (he drinks his milk cold – makes life easy while camping), get ready for the day
- 8:00-9:30 Breakfast
- 9:30-10:00 Pack our stuff
- 10:00-11:30 Start cycling or if we stayed in the same location, one of us would take 2 hours of me-time and the other would make a hike. We often started with August in front of Tine’s bike so that August could look around (and does not yet fall asleep).
- 11:30-13:00 Give August his lunch while taking a break… change his diaper and then he slowly falls asleep in the bike trailer behind Louis’ bike around 12:00 or 12:30.
- 13:00-14:00 Tine & Louis have lunch while August is taking his nap – we take the bike trailer as a stroller onto the restaurant terrace. Warning: we had to be inventive to keep August out of the sun while sleeping…not easy when the roads are curved and the sun comes from a different side every couple of minutes. When he woke up after 2 hours nap we would give him some more of our food or fruit.
- 14:00-17:00 Visit or cycle: often we would either cycle a bit more, visit a city, do a hike in the mountains, or plan shifts taking me time to read/chill/write.
- 17:00-18:00 Find a good camping spot or hotel. We traveled in July and August which is high-season, but we did not reserve any hotel or campground in advance. We would often call the day itself either in the morning or sometimes just half an hour before knowing if we would make it to that city or want to stop earlier (in case of August being unhappy on the bicycle or bad weather).
- 18:00-19:30 Get installed, have dinner together or if there’s a nice restaurant in the hotel we would already give August his dinner and after that put our phones on WhatsApp as baby phone while August is sleeping and we’re having dinner. We would often wash out August’s re-usable diapers by hand in the shower, and let them dry during the day in the bike trailer. More on travelling with re-usable diapers in a seperate blogpost – coming up.
- 21:30-22:30 Tine & Louis sleeping time
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4. A day-by-day detail of the itinerary
Day 1: start in Castello-Molina di Fiemme to Pozza di Fassa
On the first day, we started slowly after having spent the night in Hotel Italia. We cycled past the waterfalls – Cascate dell’Avisio di Cavalese, where we had heavy rainfall and stopped cycling for an hour.
We booked an (expensive) camping in Pozza di Fassa: Camping Catinaccio Rosengarten. Since August went to bed around 19:30 we did not have the time to go to a restaurant and had takeaway pizza in front of our tent… in between two rainfalls.
Day 2: to Passo Fedaia
The second day started very beautifully, with views of impressive mountain ranges and a steep climb. We took a break to have lunch in the restaurant La Maison Fredarola while August was sleeping in his bike trailer.
When we wanted to hit the road for the second part of the climb and after having charged our batteries, we found Tine’s bike with a flat tire. When I pumped it up again we noticed it only went flat very slowly… so rather than spending an hour there trying to fix a flat tire of an electric bike, we inflated the tier every 20 minutes. With only a big hour of climbing the Passo Fedaia, we made it to Rifugio Capanna Bill. For the last part of the road we took a little closed-down road next to the hydro reservoir.
Day 3: we stayed at Passo Fedaia in Rifugio Capanna Bill
With beautiful mountains surrounding the Passo Fedaia, we decided to stay for two nights and go for some hikes. In the morning we took turns of 2 hours each to go for a hike with August while the other had some me-time. In the afternoon we took the cable car and went for a hike higher up. The Rifugio had a restaurant so we could have breakfast and dinner there. For lunch, we always had a good stack of food with us in our bags.
Day 4: to Agordo
And guess what… rather than fixing the flat tier, we decided to inflate it every 20 minutes and cycle to a bike repair shop where they fixed it for 10 euros. It saved us a lot of frustration and clumsyness on the road.
We had lunch in Agordo, visited the city, and decided to cycle a bit more uphill before searching for a camping spot in the wild. We were unlucky: The local multinational had organized their international family day in Agordo and fully booked all hotels in the surroundings. Our first pick to camp was in the garden of the school of a small village called La Valle Agordina. We filled our water bottles at the little fountain, and enjoyed the local playground, but we could not find any electricity to charge our bicycle batteries… and with more than 1000m climbing foreseen for the next day, we sure needed that.
After talking to some people in the village, they showed us their little forest and field where we could camp and offered to charge the batteries in their house. Tine had fun building a bonfire and August slept super well in his little tent, inside our bigger tent.
Day 5 to Villa Chele in Pralongo – Val di Zoldo
We climbed the mountain until Rifugio Passo Duran where we had lunch. We were rewarded by the impressive views of Chiesa, a beautiful old village with many charming wooden houses.
After that, we continued cycling downhill, with a small climb at the end to reach the charming room we booked with Louisa in Villa Chele. The host is amazing. She immediately volunteered to take care of August while we carried our bags up. We could do our laundry there and she borrowed us her hiking backpack for toddlers to do a bigger mountain hike.
We had dinner in Restaurant El Taier, a couple of 100 meters down from Villa Chele, and enjoyed the sunset from the hill next to the village.
Day 6 & 7 we stayed in Pralongo – Val di Zoldo
The next day she explained she had to take care of her grandkids in Belluno and that we could drive along to the city in her van… so we took a lovely road trip with sixty-something years old Louisa. We talked for hours, where she shared her interesting life story – from Argentina to Germany to Italy – travels by boat – falling in love – … An encounter with a woman full of wisdom. It gave us the perfect “Celestine prophecy” vibe full of magic. If you haven’t read the book yet: this is your call!
In the mornings, Louis would sneak out of the room and go for a long run in the mountains and read his book, while August and Tine would be calmly sleeping. On one of the mornings in Villa Chele a group of women hikers was preparing to head for the mountains, while one took out a box of cards called: “Nature meditation cards”. We bought the same deck and still enjoy it once in a while, a nice gift idea!
Day 8 to Cortina d’Ampezzo
This was a legendary day: we had to take a good 1000m climb again, The majestic roughness of the mountains is impressive, and while cycling you have all the time to enjoy it and look around.
After that, we continued our trip to Cortina d’Ampezzo where we booked a camping ground. We had to go to Camping Cortina, because Camping Rocchetta was already fully booked. The latter is a nicer campground according to the reviews… but the Pizza at Camping Rocchetta was good and August enjoyed the playground a lot.
Day 9 to Cinque Torri and San Ciascian
Before continuing our trip, we visited Cortina and had breakfast there.
While climbing up the next col, the views over the Cortina valley are nice, so worth stopping for.
After a couple of hours, we reached the cable car to Cinque Torri. We did not plan all of this upfront, but when searching we saw that it was certainly worth going up for a hike around the rocks of Cinque Torri.
We continued cycling for a little while until we reached B&B Hotel Frohsinn for the night.
Day 10 to Passo Gardena
As we never knew what we would find on our route and had quite some flexibility in our schedule, we would never reserve any hotels or campgrounds in advance… so we were extremely happy to find a free room in Hotel Cir. A very nice place on top of the Passo Gardena, with a good restaurant, nice terras with relaxing chairs, and the most impressive views of the rocks around.
Day 11 we stayed in Passo Gardena – Hotel Cir
Since the hotel was so nice and nature so impressive, we decided to stay a second night and take the time to relax and take half a day of me time each, while the other would take care of August.
Day 12 to Moena
We climbed the Sella Pass before closing our loop through the Dolomites in Canazei, the city where we passed as well on our second day. That night we stayed in Hotel Catinaccio, a nostalgic hotel that had its best days… but the old charm was pretty funny and August enjoyed the pool a lot.
Day 13 to Castello di Fiemme
On our last day, we rolled down the hill, along the river with a day of fully separated cycling lanes to our start location. It was an easygoing day to close this beautiful trip through the Dolomites.
In case you are planning to take this trip, please reach out with any questions! It would be great if we could inspire others to have a similar adventure with their kids.
Carbon Conscious Travel 