For several days, I’ve been staring at the ring of mountains that encircle Udine (pronounced Udine-ay).

There’s a massive one that I deduce to be Jôf di Montasio (height, 2,752 m).

I’ve come to Udine, a quiet town in northeast Italy, primarily to relax and forget a recent and wholly unexpected resignation from my job.

But I’ve had awful luck when visiting mountainous regions, and I’m resolved to actually see some on this trip.

It’s an achievable goal, as the Julian Alps are about an hour away by train.

The train from Udine to Tarvisio Boscoverde

Mountains create erratic weather, and the forecast—clear sunshine that I’ve been enjoying here with my girlfriend for the last few days—has started to give way to clouds and rain overnight.

Our mental model of our holiday involved one more day of sitting around, drinking strong little coffees and glasses of wine, and more reading.

But the weather won’t wait, so I make an executive decision to put down our Tassimo coffees and books, and dash off.

A quick scan of the Trainline app tells us we have about an hour until the next train to Tarvisio Boscoverde, an alpine ski resort on the Italian–Austrian border that you can reach directly from Udine by train.

We throw everything into our bags in a sort of moody silence due to how last minute my decision to abort our peace was.

The suddenness of the decision means we haven’t bothered to charge our devices. In a rush, I pack our Kindle charger instead of a phone charger. It’s a ‘left right goodnight’ for the romantic mood.

“But come on, baby, the mountains will be so beautiful.”

At Udine railway station, a ticket seller confirms that there are indeed trains to Tarvisio Boscoverde, but he can’t sell us a ticket for the one that’s due to depart next because it is operated by a different company (Railjet) than the one he works for (Trenitalia).

Fortunately, the Railjet train is standing on platform 1 so we hop on.

Walking along the Alpe Adria Cycle Path

After a scenic train journey that bored through mountains and valleys, we arrive in Tarvisio Boscoverde.

We hadn’t banked on the station being a quiet parkway. It’s an hour walk into town.

There’s a shuttle bus, but we have no clue how frequently it runs.

An elderly Austrian lady and her middle-aged daughter are also waiting. They stand around chain-smoking, trying to comprehend the printed bus timetable.

We chat off and on for half an hour until the next bus arrives.

When it drops us off in town, instinct tells me to turn my back on the main road and try to find a path that’s away from the traffic so we can walk in peace.

Straight away, we strike it lucky.

The Alpe Adria Cycle Path runs for 415 kilometres, from Salzburg to Grado, a pretty town on the Adriatic between Venice and Trieste.

The path crosses the Austrian border into Italy via the Canal Valley. Just behind Tarvisio bus station, you can join it and follow it all the way to Grado on the Adriatic Sea if you like.

The cable car from Camporosso up Monte Santo di Lussari

But we’re only going as far as Camporosso, a ski village a few kilometres west of Tarvisio to take the Telecabina Monte Lussari—a cable car that takes visitors to the top of the mountain of the same name.

As someone who doesn’t drive, it’s always great to come across a location that encourages walking, and this stretch of the Alpe Adria path has an asphalt surface, so walking and cycling are easy.

And very pretty, too.

Jôf di Montasio and Monte Santo di Lussari stand sentinel on one side of the path, while lower, grassier hills flank the other.

Groups of elite cyclists ride by, panniers hanging off their bikes like Buckaroo, and families pass by on hire bikes.

Taking advantage of the thirsty cyclist trade, there are regular bars with outdoor seating. We stop at one to enjoy the magnificent views with a beer before pressing on to the cable car terminal.

At the top of Monte Santo di Lussari lies a 16th-century convent surrounded by a small alpine hamlet.

No snow has fallen yet and the ski season is still a few weeks away, so for now, the hamlet is sleepy.

A steep lane winds upwards, through the hamlet, and a gravel lane circles its base.

In a few weeks, it will be thronging with winter sports enthusiasts enjoying a lively après ski.

But in the last weeks of summer, it’s a perfect spot for a quiet mountainside stroll that we take advantage of.

The view from the top of Monte Santo di Lussari

The view to the north and northeast is wide open, and extends for miles into Austria.

To the east, Jôf di Montasio stands ultra-prominent and ultra-proud, peering through tall pines.

Swivelling to the southeast, needles of razor-sharp mountains, more reminiscent of the Dolomites, form a tall shield wall of bare rock that separates Italy from Slovenia, just ten kilometres away.

To the south, the Canal Valley winds leisurely away, deeper into Italy. Beyond it to the west lies a jumble of enormous, overlapping massifs peeping above inverted clouds.

From this vantage, our walk from Tarvisio to Camporosso looks absurdly short, though it took us a few hours, and we worked up a big appetite.

Lunch on top of a mountain

A good rule of thumb when travelling in a new place searching for something to eat is never to stop at the first place you see. Places that occupy the most convenient and prominent spots can literally “dine out” on this basis, and in my experience, are usually busy, overpriced, or serve substandard food.

Sticking to this rule, we walk past some cosy rifugios up to the top of the hamlet and park ourselves outside a rustic place decked out in bare wood and heavy furniture.

A keg of a woman takes our order.

We’re deep in the Friulian region of Italy, meaning the menu is a mixture of Slavic staples and Italian flair.

Deciding not to mess around, we order a three-pint carafe of beer to wash down polenta, sauerkraut, roast potatoes, and a link of swollen sausages (for me), and ragù alla bolognese (for my girlfriend).

She’s not unadventurous—rather, she has her own chef-ey rule of always trying obvious dishes to:

1. Deduce how they ought to be cooked
2. Sample their regional differences

With that much beer sloshing around in our empty stomachs, lunch is a happy affair.

Though, it would be hard to be otherwise with a mountain panorama at 1,800 metres.

A huge bird of prey rides the thermals as we eat, elegantly tracing upwards spirals in the sky.

Hungry walkers sit down at nearby tables and sate their appetites.

We finish our beer in silence, admiring the view.

Diners settle their bills and get on with their lives as we slurp. Eventually, we are the only ones left, and all we can hear is the sound of the table awnings flapping in the breeze.

The last cable car goes down the mountain at 5:15pm, and with about half an hour until they stop running, we head to the terminal to start our return journey to Tarvisio Boscoverde

Returning to Udine. Don't risk the last train

If you love trains, you’ll get plenty of kicks at Tarvisio Boscoverde. It’s primarily a freight station, and, being the last stop before Austria, a huge number of goods trains roll through.

We’re waiting for the last train back to Udine that leaves at 8pm.

But it never arrives.

Darkness settles in as we watch the rail staff build trains and shift stacks of wagons into the sidings. The heavy clanking and bright lights are mesmerising in the dark.

The few dozen passengers also waiting for the train become antsy and restless as the evening drags on without any updates.

But there’s not much anyone can (or will) do to help.

The border police loafing in their office don’t care, and the station staff all seem to work for the freight companies and have zero clue about passenger trains.

Our scheduled train lingers on the departures board until around 9pm before flickering out, leaving it blank and squashing any lingering hope that our return train might appear.

My phone is out of battery, and so is my girlfriend’s. We can’t charge them using the Kindle charger I packed earlier, meaning we can’t look into alternative travel and accommodation options.

A young Arab and his Chinese friends are getting very frustrated at the lack of information.

They have onward connections to catch from Udine, and decide to stage a sit-in protest inside the station building like Yoko Ono and John Lennon, refusing to move until a solution is found, whether it’s in the next half an hour or next week.

“Thisistheproblemofthisinstitution itisnotourfault,” they chant.

Maria, our saviour

Hope arrives in the form of Maria, our warmhearted saviour. She is a train guard scheduled on the train back to Udine that we’re all waiting for.

Her news is solemn.

The train has broken down and won’t be taking anyone back to Udine tonight.

A replacement bus is being arranged to take passengers back—but, for efficiency’s sake, the bus is being held until a train from Austria arrives, so that the passengers of both trains can transfer to the same coach.

In a funny twist, the Italy-bound train from Austria also breaks down and ÖBB, the ever-efficient Austrian railway company, organizes their own coach to take their stranded passengers into Italy, bypassing us.

And due to the maximum allowable number of miles professional drivers are allowed to cover in a single shift, when the coaches do show up, their drivers won’t be able to take them back to Udine tonight and new drivers will have to be sourced.

In short—it’s a mini fiasco.

We must have used up all our luck when we discovered the Alpe Adria Cycle Path earlier.

Still, there is Maria, who needs to get home.

As long as she is nearby, we’re confident we can tag along with her when her company decides on a plan to get her back to Udine.

She kindly buys us a coffee from the vending machine using tokens from her employer. She radiates that calm, motherly aura that the best midwives, psychiatrists, and social workers have.

With no idea how we are going to get home, but united by a “we are all in this together” spirit, we chat idly about everything.

She has a crush on Mark Knopfler, the lead singer of Dire Straits, who she loves. She struggles to understand the Mancunian dialect and has worked on Italian trains for decades.

Eventually, we run out of conversation, so my girlfriend and I head upstairs to enjoy a glass of white wine from the restaurant on the top floor of the station. Freight being predominantly a nocturnal activity, the restaurant stays open until midnight.

I suspect Maria would love to join us, but she can’t drink on duty and has to take care of the stranded passengers.

Our coach gets pulled over

The coach finally arrives around 10:30pm and causes a wave of excitement. We waste no time boarding it.

Its driver deftly manoeuvres us through the narrow streets of Tarvisio and onto the autostrade.

But the relief of the tired and irritable passengers is stamped on when the polizia, the Italian police, pull the coach over, sirens and all.

A stern female officer with a face like sour milk boards the coach and demands to see everyone’s travel documents.

Something must have flagged up the fact that our coach contains passengers from Austria.

Everyone just wants to get home or to some place where they can salvage their travel plans.

Although I packed the Kindle charger by accident, I did have the presence of mind to throw our passports in our day bags.

Sour Milk takes her time inspecting everyone’s documents, delaying us massively. I bet she takes sick pleasure in it.

Some of the passenger’s travel documents offend her and curdle her face to a deeper shade of green. She takes the documents back to her hive in the police car for a more thorough examination.

Maria, with her indomitable patience, turns in her seat to calm some of the passengers who are starting to grizzle.

When the police officer re-boards the coach, she looks disappointed that we are all innocent, and thrusts the wad of travel documents to Maria, who dolefully hands them back out, apologizing for another delay that is not her fault.

Back in Udine

Around midnight, the coach begins to lurch around tight bends, leaning so that we have to grab on to our seats. We’re off the autostrade and are picking our way into Udine.

Maria has had a dreadful shift and has to get up to do it all again tomorrow.

But she’s all class.

In the centre of town, she asks the driver to drop her off directly outside the train station car park.

While he is pulling up, she walks down the coach and puts her hand gently on my shoulder.

To me and my girlfriend, she says, “If you miss your flight or decide to stay longer, let me know and we can meet up.”

Maria’s giant smile and wave to both of us as she walks over to her car is the last we see of her.