Wednesday 13th Oct: A Small Village

The guidebook’s starred locations don’t always yield the most interesting visits. Armena, which isn’t mentioned anywhere, stands in the hills behind Lake Orta, a fairly ordinary sort of place, with a nice church. Rounding a corner, we came across the communal wash-house, dated 1929. It was in a functioning state of repair, but presumably now made redundant by washing machines. Hand-washing drudgery it may have been, but they’ve lost the communal gathering and all that chatting and gossip.

A statue of a Saint by the church, quite usual, and as we approached it appeared that there were Coke cans and bottles by his feet. Was this indeed St Eco, the Patron Saint of re-cycling? Disappointingly, the cans and bottles turned out to be devotional candles.

Back to the site, and there’s a lady swimming in the lake who convinces Jane that the water’s quite warm. “Gets to be 24, 25 degrees in Aug, early Sept.”, she says. "Yes, but it’s now mid-October", I’m thinking. But Jane is convinced: I’m not, and here’s the picture to prove it! Jane was in for about 15 minutes and said it was invigoratingggg....