Euro campervan trip 2023 (Stage 4 - a week of chill out by Lake Garda, Italy)

We arrived at Lake Garda gagging for some down time. The previous week has been a challenge, and fun. But we are ready to embrace less excitement. This is the only long stay we had prebooked from the UK, we have planned for six nights here, but are flexible.

The site is exactly what we expected. Well positioned, and a little up market. On the lake, with fabulous views. It's own excellent restaurant and very clean facilities.

We have the premium pitch thanks to Mrs NHSontheRun's forethought and good planning.

The whole of the world, but particularly Italy, is suddenly experiencing freakishly hot weather. It's 35*c today, but feels much hotter , even by the lake the air is stiflingly hot.

We build a hastily constructed hippy shack out the back of the van. A few strings and a twenty euro Ibiza beach sheet will provide shelter from the sun.

I am reminded of Icarus, the whole world is flying just too near the sun.

The planet is probably fucked and I think we know who's to blame. It's us, the factor 2 spf oil, and lemon juice in the hair brigade. We failed to act and the world is now burning.

We chat to who we can on site; and our plan for five weeks on the road extracts the wow factor I had hoped for.

People are very generous. Presumably we look destitute. We pop to the beach and on our return there are basil plants adorning our shack. A parting gift from the unknown camper. No note, hope you saw the @nhsontherun logo and see this : thanks xxx

The Lake has its own weather system driven by the sun warming the mountains to the north, the cold water of the deep lake (over 400m) and the sheer size of the lake. Its the largest lake outside Finland in Europe. I will not check my facts in the hope of provoking thought on the part of you dear reader. So what I think I read, is that very warm weather creates a wind known locally as a Pelèr, which can whip suddenly at night reaching 40kph from North to South. Our third night, we popped up the lake for dinner, the winds started. We had left the van locked. Which is quite well prepared for us. However chairs, tables, barbeque, washing line fully loaded, hammock, kyake etc were strewn around our pitch. With the onset of the Pelèr we gave no thought to this. On our return our amazing neighbours has literally battened down our hatches, collecting and stowing everything they could. Two lady travellers to whom I remain eternally grateful.

The days were beautiful, hot, lazy days by the lake. We had planned trips to Verona, to vineyards, to explore, but 35*c makes the best of us lazy. Our excuse simple, Reg loves the lake, where he swims all day to keep cool. We were properly stuck here. He also took to our new inflatable kyake. Panting excitedly and sitting shivering with excitement up front with Mrs W. We swam, did our yoga, ate, drank wine, and read.

The fourth night the Pelèr was accompanied by the finest electrical storm I have witnessed, literally hours of non stop lightening. In Nessa hail sounds like a tone deaf Nottinghill Carnival float is in your bedroom. What fun.

I saw our Austrian saviours from the night before, our lady neighbours, literally holding their awning up. Soaked and battered. It would have been very rude to take a photo, I desperately wanted to. I shouted to ask if I could help. Try as I did, I really couldn't make my offer sound genuine. They declined saying in their best English, "oh no, we have best camping fun". Full of self loathing I retreated to the comfort of Nessa where a panoramic view of the storm, a newly cracked bottle of Primitivo and a bar of chocolate waited.

By morning it was as if the storm never happened. Beautiful skys, still lake, and fabulous Italian food.

Having spent five nights on the beautiful but less touristic wedt coast we decided to decamp to Bardolino and the town of Garda on the east for our final night. A short walk from the new site and we had a wonderful lunch in Garda, shopped and saw sights and behaved like tourists for a day.

We slept off the 1.5 litres of shared frizzante house white by the lake and swam before sunset.

We thoroughly enjoyed Garda, perhaps the most holiday like part of our trip. We are day twelve, and heading for Süd Tyrol tomorrow. Amazingly not even half way through the journey and we are so disconnected from reality. Thank god for family WhatsApp groups and the internet. Loving it! Liberated and adrift in Europe, a feeling I had really hoped to experience on this trip. Louise did our first washing of the holiday. She reported that compared to the 12 pairs of knickers she washed for herself, she could only find two pairs of my pants. Completely in travelling mode.