Cycling the River Po route: a suprise campground

 We might not have the Romans with us anymore, but we're still riding and slowly making our way towards the Venice Lagoon. This route we have planned will take us along the Po River and eventually northwards towards the outer islands along the famous Lagoon, a distance of a couple of hundred kilometers or so.

Our planned route from Ostiglia towards the Venice Lagoon

We left Ostiglia and the terminus of the Via Claudia on Sunday morning and started making our way along the River Po. This is a huge, wide, slow-moving river that at first was very impressive. We saw next to no boat traffic on it - a couple of pleasure boats and one river cruise boat moored along the bank on Sunday. However, after a few miles, the path, dare I say it, became a bit boring. The cycleway was on top of the flood- control levy, and on the river side, we were often separated from the river by a wide swath of tree plantations (looked like tall skinny poplars), presumably to stabilise the soil in the flood plain. On the other side was all agricultural land, much of it lying fallow now after the harvest, and collections of very run-down farm buildings.

The River Po and it's drainage. It starts west of Turin in the Alps bordering France and on its course to the Adriatic drains all the major Italian lakes - Maggiore (shared with Switzerland), Como and Garda, etc. I remember learning about the Po in Mr Paxton's geography class in school!

A large power station in Ostiglia

There were miles of these tree plantations along the river bank between our path
and the river

We found this spot to have our picnic lunch. There weren't too many river access points on Sunday's ride.

But our day was greatly uplifted when we discovered there was a campground at about our 40 km point. Campgrounds are rare in this area - it's way off the tourist trail. And this one turned out to be an absolute gem. It was quiet, had a lovely grassy area just for us, and a gourmet restaurant. We were relieved that there was a restaurant as we had found nowhere along the way to buy dinner supplies. It even had a swimming pool but it wasn't heated and not quite hot enough a day to tempt us. The owners and staff were extremely friendly.

We didn't mind cutting our day a bit short to enjoy this place. At dinner we met a delightful couple from Berlin who were enjoying their first tour in their new camper van. We chatted with them for quite a while over grappa in the garden after dinner. So all in all, a day that started out as "ho-hum" turned to gold!

The campground name translates to "Fireflies in the Fog"

The campground is down behind the sign, picture taken from the bike path

For dinner, my appetizer is a zucchini flan with sauce

Mascarpone with salted caramel for dessert 


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