End of the Lakes for us and a Classic Italian City

Hello everyone

This is No.4 for those of you who are still reading.  We’re into the heart of Chiantishire now although these notes lag a few days behind.

One piece of news which refers back to the first blog is that H’s cousins David and Martin did complete their walk.  In the absence of a map they had followed my suggestion (which I’d forgotten having given) of walking along the canal straight into Birmingham.  I didn’t think they would complete the walk so they very well.  I think the odd canal-side pub helped.

Les   

Leaving Lake Maggiore was on a Sunday morning and there were more cyclists whizzing up and down in brightly coloured lycra than there were cars.  Almost all of them were men in groups up to about twenty five and with the lakeside roads being pretty flat it would be fairly easy riding compared to climbing up the hills away from the water.   Our driving mileage per day has dropped considerably and we’re just pootling* from one place to another as the mood takes us so we decide to stop at the eastern end of Lake Lugano for a couple of days ‘rest’.  There are a good number of cycle paths here well away from roads and we had an excellent ride along a converted old railway line. 

Just a word or two about Italian drivers.  They really don’t live up (or is it down) to their reputation for all-round bad driving and are really pretty considerate to pedestrians wanting to cross the road.  Do note that we haven’t driven in Rome on this trip.  However, I fear that their view of other drivers is more akin to opponent than fellow road user and I find I do sometimes end up being a little more assertive than normal when driving.

Arriving at Lake Como’s western shore we turn south and find that the opportunities for parking are non-existent again and the garden visit we’d planned was out of the question.  A little further on we saw a sign which said car park and pulled over, realised there was a campsite next to us and in a less planned manner even than usual, decided to stay there.  It turned out to be in a lovely little town called Lenno with the usual fine Gelateria (ice-cream shop) and a garden of its own to visit.  Set up by a famous Italian explorer/mountaineer the garden was extremely formal, all shades of green, hardly a flower and even fully grown trees pruned into precise domes.  Beautifully done and maintained even if it wasn’t how I would choose to garden.

Lake Como is like a giant irregular upturned Y with a couple of useful ferries criss-crossing at regular intervals and we took the one to Bellagio which is on the promontory formed by the two ‘legs’ of the Y.  I was just standing on a flight of stairs leaning on my walking pole while waiting for Heather who was in a clothes shop when a man and woman stopped below to take a photo.  As I made to move out of the way he said “no, I want to photograph you, you look like a traveller and I like the outfit and the stick”.  Well, who am I to disappoint my public?  He was a New Yorker now living in Dallas and I’m certain he wasn’t just having a laugh at my expense.  There was another garden here at Bellagio, very colourful with Rhododendrons, Azaleas and Acers plus lots of statuary.  A classical mansion stood near the water with gardens along the shore and rising up the west facing slope behind the house.  It was a house in the style of a Clark’s shoebox with chimneys by Gaudi.  Many of the statues had those gravity defying leaves just where the ’bits’ were, but only on the men, not the women or the male dogs. 

So after the garden we parked ourselves for lunch at a lakeside restaurant with a table right on the waterside.  Lovely Italian place with a characteristic menu and even so the couple behind me each had an omelette and chips.   We’d missed the departure time of the hourly ferry by ten minutes but in a typical loosely organised Italian manner the ferry was fifteen minutes late and left from a different jetty than its arrival point.  But we caught it.

Well they may just be holes in the ground that are filled with water but these lakes are magnificent and in my mind Lake Como is even better than Lake Maggiore.  They both feel quite hemmed in by the surrounding hills but not oppressively so and even at this time of year the snowy peaks to the north are easily seen.  Lake Garda, the last one we’ll visit is on lower ground and although the peaks can still be seen the surroundings are much flatter.

Our chosen campsite is at the southernmost point of Lake Garda with easy access to the railway crossing the Po valley from east to west (yes, and west to east).   On the approach to the town at about three o clock we hit the most almighty traffic snarl up.  .  We have arrived in town as the Mille Miglia is strutting its stuff.  Now the Mille Miglia was a race of a thousand miles non-stop around Italy on ordinary roads through ordinary towns and villages which stopped taking place in the 1950s.  Stirling Moss famously won it in 1955 (?) covering the distance at an average speed of 99 mph.  I don’t think they did Health and Safety Assessments with the same rigour as we would expect today.  The event has been resurrected and risibly they still call it a ‘Race’, although it is just a car rally for people with old, classic or newer sports cars, hundreds of them.  The traffic jam is caused by there clearly being no plan of how to get the cars through town while the roads are still open to ordinary traffic which is augmented by the spectators coming to see the cars.  So at the first roundabout (traffic circle) Marshals are waving their arms and pointing, the classic cars are waved along the wrong side of the road, there are no proper traffic police directing vehicles and the town and the main road bypassing the town are at a standstill.  It is classic disorganisational brilliance that can only be described as top championship standard.  As we left the main road we were two miles from our campsite.  We arrived two and a half hours later and I was not a happy bunny.

Still, a perfect pitch overlooking the water and an excursion by train to Verona planned for the morrow.  Well we got our ticket and the train at about 30 minutes late.  By the way continental platforms are much lower than British ones, being not much more than a foot or so high so that there are two or three steps up to the train.  Not much good for wheelchair access. 

Verona was a real treat with an impressive Roman Amphitheatre right in the middle of the town.  It was originally built outside the walls but is now surrounded by old Verona.  Having bought our ‘Verona Pass’ we skipped straight past the queue waiting to get into the arena and also past the locals dressed as Roman warriors hoping to be photographed for a fee by tourists.  Why would you bother ?  The arena is a top opera location these days and very impressive, even discounting the fact that it’s about two thousand years old.  A notice inside told us that since Roman times the arena has been used for sack races, greasy pole climbing and bingo.  Quite a change from gladiatorial combat when “eyes down” meant face down on the sand with your head chopped off.  For those of you who don’t know, Verona is the location for Romeo and Juliet.  In the early 20^th century, the city authorities, mindful of the tourist trade, tarted up an old house, stuck a ‘medieval’ balcony on it and declared it ‘Juliet’s House’.  Naturally this home of a fictitious character can be visited for a fee.  Naturally we didn’t bother.  A couple of nondescript churches and a cathedral had very impressive and spectacular interiors and a theme we’ve noticed in several towns here.  The theme being that while the erection of many of these ecclesiastical buildings began seven or eight hundred years ago, they remain unfinished.  It might be tax reasons, it might be boredom but really it’s that eventually no-one gives a stuff.   All they need is to get a decent team of Polish builders in and they’d all be finished in a couple of months.  We went up a huge campanile in a handy lift and got a good panoramic view, with the snow capped peaks to the north still visible and the Roman arena sitting in the middle distance.  Goodness knows how impressive it must have looked when new (or only a few hundred years old) when most of the surrounding buildings would have been single or possibly two stories high.  Astoundingly, a garden in Verona which we failed to get to has been open to the public and maintained by the same family since 1581.  On reflection this is probably one of the most amazing things I’ve ever heard.

* I wouldn’t want to define ‘pootling’ either but somehow I know what it means.