Boondock Puffins

Camping in Italy in June… by a lake… who’d have thought there’d be mosquitoes? Certainly not us, who in an unusual fashion were incredibly unprepared for this camping trip!

We had taken the opportunity of a weekend free to head over to watch the rowing World Cup at Varese, and to test out our new tent (a LoneRider ADV tent that we are taking with us on our long trip).

We set up shop (or rather, camp) at a site called Camping Lago di Monate. The staff of the campsite were very friendly and everything was run efficiently. It wasn’t exactly made for tents, the vast majority seemed to be people who owned/long term rented static caravans for holidays, but the small strip for tents was perfectly serviceable.

It was about 33°C when we arrived so we had been quietly baking since arriving and leaving the safety of the air conditioned car. We took our towels down to the ‘beach’ (a grassed area with a fence that had a jetty onto the busy but murky lake), sat for a few minutes, decided it wasn’t really for us and instead packed up and headed for an exploration.

We realised when looking at the map that Lake Como wasn’t that far away (about 45 minutes – ish), so we headed off and drove out to Como.

While Lake Como is, I am sure, beautiful and well worth the visit, Como as a city is something that, from what we saw, isn’t really worth the time. It was a very busy, dirty city, with lots of rubbish around both the streets and in the lake. It seemed a shame really, as clearly the other parts around the lake are very picturesque (I assume, having not visited them but given their popularity amongst the rich and famous, it seems likely).

Heading back to our campsite, we realised that we hadn’t checked our camping packing particularly thoroughly and had neglected to purchase a gas canister. Thankfully, our hectic campsite had a tiny restaurant that provided us with the most epically enormous meat platter. This, combined with some homemade cookies we’d brought with us, and an ice cream each, made for a greatly appreciated supper!

The following morning we gave up trying to find a place to go for a run, it was simply too surrounded by busy main roads. Instead we had coffee, packed up our tent and headed over to the World Cup. It was incredibly warm but epic to be a spectator and lovely to see everyone we were cheering for do so well.

After the racing, we headed back to the car (which had been left parked in an officially marked out field – we’d had a panic as we were driving in that we hadn’t booked parking but it was entirely fine with plenty of space) and set off towards home. Deciding we weren’t quite ready for our weekend camping trip to be done, we looked to see where to stay next…