Friday 4th September: Cool morning, warm sunny day, blue skies then a late storm: 18°C to 24ºC.
Santa Croce: 15K: 11.00am to 2.30pm: Lazy day walking around Bellagio, Lake Como
Accommodation: Private Holiday House Santa Croce, Italy
Train from Chiavenna
Waiting for ferry Verenna to Bellagio
Lake Como, ferry to Bellagio
Coffee break promenade Bellagio
Lost in Bellagio
Renno for sale
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Lunch in the park Bellagio
Newcastle cycling crew Bellagio
Beautiful evening on Lake Como
Ferry from Bellagio to Verenna
We've missed the train - 8pm cuppa
Highlight of the day was meeting up with Graham's cycling friends from Newcastle in Bellagio, Lake Como where they were midway through a cycle tour with Como Cycling tours. Such a co-incidence that they should be there on the day that we planned to take a joy ride on a ferry to Bellagio on Lake Como Northern Italy. One of the cyclists, Peter Shiels and Graham, were part of a 5 man group who surfed the world together for several years back in the 70's.
Our day started with a leisurely breakfast in Santa Croce - boiled eggs, meusli, bread, tea and coffee. It's 8.42am when we catch a bus from Santa Croce down to Chiavenna to meet the train connection to Colica. Then a second connection to Verenna from where we connected to a ferry, one of dozens on Lake Como, to Bellagio, on a peninsular at the junction of the 2 arms of Lake Como. Ten minutes later and we're on a packed ferry to Bellagio, the most touristy of all Lake Como villages.
We arrive to a busy touristy Bellagio at 11am just in time for a Jet Boiled coffee. We find a spot on the promenade to boil our billy, much to the discern of the well-to-do tourists promenading around town. After coffee, we do a 2hr walk around the Peninsular to Pesscalo, a small fishing village behind Bellagio where there’s many old houses for sale, badly in need of a major renovation. Then up and over the other side to the Gardens of Mezli, and back to the promenade for lunch.
At 2.30pm, time to catch up with Peter and Gail, Peter is one of Graham's surfing buddies from way back. They're with a group of pseudo cyclists from Newcastle staying at the Silvio Hotel behind Bellagio. A short walk up the hill again on a busy road finds us sitting in the beer garden overlooking Lake Como with the group. We're there for almost 3hrs, and one by one, other friends join in - they'd been for a cycle up a 1200m hill somewhere that morning.
Jenny has timed the connections of the ferry/train/train/bus back to Sante Croce to perfection, and we leave in time to get the 4.45pm ferry, but the ferry is late getting into Verenna and after a sprint up the hill to catch the 6.24pm train, arriving with 10 seconds to spare, it's also 15 minutes late leaving. Clearly we’re in Italy not Switzerland. The trains are cheap - for a reason.
We arrive in Colico late and find we've missed our scheduled connection to Chiavenna so we have to wait another hour - time for a late afternoon coffee outside the train station. The 8.04pm train gets into Chiavenna at 8.45pm and now we've missed the last bus up the valley to Santa Croce. We sure are in Italy with every connection late.
It’s dark and we don’t want to walk on this country road down to Santa Croce. We pop into a small shop and the shop keeper kindly rings us a taxi, a local who knows John from Santa Croce, a friend of Mark and Susan whose house we are in and 20 minutes later we're back "home" drinking beer and celebrating a lovely day - just in time before another storm cracks.
But for us, sadly, our journey is over and in the morning, we will be returning to Zurich to fly home. Our daughter who has been regularly visiting Ian's Dad in Redcliffe while we were way, has informed us that Grandad is not well and has taken a turn. He’s in Redcliffe Hospital and not expected to recover. Fraser Somers is a week short of 95 and worked as a professional fisherman until he was 86 - a work ethic to be envied. We hope we get there in time.
We'll return next year to finish our walk.