Dead Ends & Dolci

Dead Ends & Dolci comes from the team behind Dead Ends & Cake and moves the same idea to the south of Switzerland: a self-supported bikepacking ride on a free route, where every checkpoint sits at the end of a remote dead-end road and riders choose both the order and the way between them. The clock runs from the Friday morning start to the finisher party on Sunday.

The organisers want to show a Ticino beyond the classic flat rides around Lago Maggiore and Lago di Lugano: countless small rugged roads, remote valleys, old villages of stone houses and switchback climbs with almost no traffic. The terrain mixes gravel and mountain bike ground, and the mild climate of the country's southernmost region is part of the appeal.

The name explains the rest. At the end of each dead end, volunteers wait with a sweet local speciality, vegan ones included, and the weekend closes with food, drinks, coffee and more dolci. Riders enter solo or as a pair, and outside help is limited to what any rider could find, from village shops to kind strangers.