Saturday, May 23, 2009

In Leonardo's Footsteps

Today we headed into the mountains above Lake Como. We walked up a historic mule track, narrow and very steep, until we finally reached the tiny village of Vezio with 20 houses and a
castle dating from 1200’s.
We held no high expectations of the castle but it was great. We climbed the central tower, found armour to fit us and looked at the falcons and other birds of prey. The best part was the view over the lake. It was like the eagle’s eyrie. As we looked across the lake, we appeared to be at the same height as the snow fields on the other side.
The other highlight was the tiny restaurant. We shamefully admit that we fortified ourselves with beer and wine before continuing on our way.
The path deteriorated, becoming such that I doubt if the mules would use it - steeper and narrow but fortunately, mainly down. We were in search of the source of Italy’s shortest river.
Eventually, we found it. The Fiumelatte gushed out of a cave in a torrent and thundered down the mountainside……. with us in hot pursuit.
Our feet were muddy but we had traversed from the source to the mouth of Europe’s shortest river….. all 400 metres of it!
We took the easy lake road back and the two intrepid explorers collapsed on the bed.

Later on reading the guidebook, we discovered that Leonardo had explored the river before we did!

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