After a night of severe repercussions from the lorry
tyre Pizzas we decide to take a trip around the lake to see if we can camp up
somewhere free for a further night, as this really is magical plaice (see what
I did there?) and do some stealthy fishing that won’t impinge on international
fishing types. The book of occasional fiction tells us to explore the less
glitzy western side of the lake. This we do. The book forgot to mention that in
fact the road runs out for a short period of time. Still, we press on. Sadly,
every available space is taken up by the fishing types and the Olympic
escapees.
We do an entire lap of the lake and then half again
(ending up where we started) just to be sure and finally find somewhere just
outside Marta (smallest ‘Sosta Temporanea’ signpost in the world). We think
this is free until some anxious fella collars Noush for €10, but it’s for 24
hours, got a private beach (fishing, siii!) and it’s sheltered, quiet and
blissful. We sit on our little beach from about half two up til the wee hours
(well, until about 10pm, when the weather decides to go berserk) and catch precisely
nothing (Jon reckons he had a monster fish on, but then it got away… jury is
out..).
The lake is a really peculiar spot. The level of the
water is affected by the tide somehow (called the ‘sesse’), we see this in
dramatic effect when an almost full moon starts to rise on the horizon opposite
where we are attempting to fish. The Moon is deep orange and rises at about a
million miles an hour. As soon as it appears the lake starts behaving very
oddly; waves start creeping ever faster towards our feet with no apparent
regularity: they break, they recede, they come back with a vengeance and then
go silent. It’s all a bit mystical. The spooky rising of orange moon, tidal
lake, the legend of Santa Caterina (they tried to drown her with a stone around
her feet, but the stone floated and saved her. Odd). Mystery and history
afoot..so of course we start telling each other about ghost stories and
inexplicable encounters. This is not good for sitting in the dark on the shores
of a haunted and eerie lake. We don’t last long and as the noises from the lake
get ever more weird we retreat back to the comfort of Onzo and talk about optimal
tyre pressures and things.
