From our perch up here amongst the ripples of breeze that rustle the olives, vines & cypress dotting the hills above the southern part of Lake Garda, one can plan sorties out to take advantage of any cooling effect from lake or wind.

The first bit of exploring took us a few miles up the west side of the lake Late June seems a good time to holiday here. Flowering shrubs are abundant and in full display. Roads are not that busy, parking is easy and the places we came to are very slow & sleepy.

Gardone is a chalk & cheese kind of place. I presume the cheese is the tasty place & the chalk is nothing to write home about. Well, the ‘chalk’ follows the lakeside with very grand, impressive century+-old mansions beside the water on a stretch called the Gardone Riviera. Hmmm; it does not really smack of Nice or le Tropez; all a bit grey & concrete & baked promenade. A solitary tree provides some natural shade half way along the front where refreshments can be found.

Gardone’s ‘cheese’ can be found above on the high lakeside above the line of multi-floored hotels & mansions. Up a picturesque, winding road, past formal gardens and through extensive lawns & strong, overbranching conifers to arrive at a small settlement at the top. The mayor’s office overlooks the lake.

Pass up further through the tidy, narrow streets to the far side of the village where a tiny piazza is enclosed by several small restaurants and the church.

Beyond this is an elaborately sculptured entrance to an open-air venue which hosts a range of modern-day artists and an idiosyncratic motor museum with some interesting figures standing guard!

Mardone is the next village up the lake. Fast asleep in the midday sun, it is far too lazy to lift itself out of any heat-imposed slumber. I had to visit to find details of the vehicle ferry across to the east side of the lake and thus avoid the motorway to the south when moving on.