We were heading across the north of Italy on our way to Austria when two friends, currently walking the Francigena through Italy, reminded me that no trip to this part of the world is truly complete without one having first walked some hills. At the time, we were driving through Belluno Province in the heart of the Venetian Dolomites and, therefore, we decided to take a day out near the small town called Arsie. Vanya found us a campsite (Camping Gajole) on the banks of Lake Corlo and, after a little ‘googling’, I discovered what appeared to be a good little walk around the lake. It was some photos (well, one photo actually) and an enthralling article on the raccontaviagi.it website that whet my appetite for this particular hike. I’m much obliged raccontaviagi!
Another, even bigger, thank you has to go to yet another site I stumbled upon while googling the Lago di Corlo – this is the magicoveneto.it website. Anything you want to know about hiking in the Veneto Region (and a great deal more) is there. I’ll use that site whenever we return to Veneto.
Lake Corlo is an artificial lake in that it was caused by the damming of the Cismon River in 1954. The resulting reservoir filled the Ligont Plain where corn and tobacco was once cultivated and 2,500 of the 3,000 population were forced to leave their homes with numerous villages disappearing for ever. Shades of Riano in the the north of Spain (Tour 4) but one hopes the Italian authorities handled the matter with more compassion than Franco.
The trail around the lake is well marked albeit narrow in parts; which lends credence to the stories that, in days of yore, parts of the trail on the north side of the lake were used by tobacco smugglers. I wore hiking boots but, they weren’t really necessary; it was dry underfoot and easy walking. The weather was mostly kind but it was very unsettled with occasional claps of thunder and lightning which, while never close enough to cause concern, made for a very ‘atmospheric’ walk. This was especially true on the long abandoned north side of the lake where just a handful of dilapidated houses remain. When the stags ceased their interminable bellowing (it’s rutting season), everything became so very quiet and still. It was almost unnerving.
The scenery during the walk is beyond my powers of description. It is simply wonderful. The lake’s water levels were somewhat low for truly great photos (steep muddy banks simply don’t help) but that is to be expected of a reservoir towards the end of summer. The forests on the north side of the lake were too thick for me too see much in the way of wildlife; just hundreds of dragonflies and a couple of snakes but; the aforementioned stags rendered anything else unnecessary.
I thoroughly enjoyed the whole walk but it was a really great moment when I finally reached the pedestrian bridge, the Ponte Polo, which would enable me to cross back over the lake to the tiny village of Rocca. The Bar da Anna was open and I was ready for a beer or two.
From the Bar da Anna it was yet a short walk back to our campsite and on the way I would pass another watering hole, the Ristorante dell’ Albergo Parigi, which sits next to all that remains of Rocca’s old church – it’s tower. The rest of the church is at the bottom of the lake.
And Arsie? Roadworks diverted us through Arsie or we wouldn’t have bothered with the place. There didn’t appear to be a lot to it and the little research I was able to conduct via Google made more of the nearby ghost town of Fumegai (which was abandoned in the early 1900’s) than it did of Arsie. Next time perhaps?