Daily Archives: 9 August 2015

August 9th

This morning we intended to kayak and walk round this Italian enclave.  But we found the whole shore from Bissone onwards full of luxury hotels and other private properties with their own beaches and would have had to go some 2 km away to get the boat in the water.  We also learned that the 3 km-long land border was overgrown and almost inaccessible in many places.  This was depressing and I decided to leave out this enclave altogether because it would simply use up too much time.  Instead, we went to Lugano to try to get maps for the next sections north of Gandria, but being a Sunday, only some “kiosks” were open and they only had brochures.  The Tourist Information office was open but they only had one map I needed.  (Many maps and guide books are still at home and there was no quick way of getting them to me – bad planning!)

Peter and I later walked up from Gandria to Brè village, where we were collected by Nona.  Distance 3,6 km; time 1 hour; vertical distance 500 m uphill.  This would save us that amount of climbing tomorrow.  Weather forecast not brilliant for the next days.

Night: Hotel Rest. Stella d’Italia, Valsolda