2020 has been a different year for everybody so far. While we took social distancing very serious we also did not go on vacation, even not on road trips, whilst this would have been a safe thing to do.

Thus we decided to start our 3 weeks roadtrip at the end of the summer holidays in Germany. Having had dreamt of spending time in Corsica, France just called out COVID risk areas one week before our travel started.

Decision was quickly made, we headed for Italy – looking for a nice beginner lake for standup paddling – which led us to Lago di Levico where 4 planned nights ended in 7.

It would not be a normal vacation if things would just work out as expected :-). We were both pretty exhausted from work itself and lack of breaks from thinking about work, standup paddling was the absolute perfect thing to clear our minds during the first 2 days.
A trip around the lake with the iSUP was around 6 km, little wind, little current, so perfect for me being a beginner on that thing.
I intensively tested my new Gloryboards Trip 12 which extactly met my expectation of stability and speed with regard to my level of non-existent expertise. The guys from Gloryboards offer a fantastic service, this needs to be said. The board just came right in time before we started our roadtrip despite minor delivery issues due to COVID.

But no vacation without hiking and cycling, of course.
I have been super excited to find a via ferrata close to our camping spot and convinced Phil to give it a try. We cycled to the route entrance in Santa Giuliana early morning and after a short hike we had to find a closed via ferrata Sentiero Clemente Chiesa. Well there were also no other hiking options close by so we turned around and cycled around Lago di Levico in the afternoon, did some standup paddling and somewhen I accepted the fact of no new via ferrata would be ticked off the list for the day.

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Next, we planned a new hiking tour on path 303 starting in Levico Terme which we found also closed due to ongoing work after the storm in 2018. But we decided to try our luck taking different forrest routes and arrived after around 1000 meters of height at Vetriolo Terme, Hotel Campet where we had a short rest mainly watching road bikers enjoying there homemade cakes and coffee at the restaurant after conquering the pass road.

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On the way back to the campsite I captured some impressions of Levico Terme.

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The pass road – yes – and the cake – of course. The next day I thought that I haven‘t cycled a pass road for some time, the elevation was not to steep and homemade cake sounded like a good reason to give it a go. So we took the enduro mountainbikes and cycled the pass road, had delicious cake and coffee and a fun fast ride down the pass road.

Like nothing a week has just passed. Yesterday, 20th Sept 2020, we joined our colleagues for a charity run and so completed another 8 km of slow running (I can tell you that my legs still hurt today) – rest of the day was spent with chilling on the lake and packing as we changed location today.

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The campsite has been simply fantastic – even if very crowded from Friday to Sunday. Large spots for the campervans, very clean facilities overall, a mini market with all the basics, close to town and a bigger super market, super affordable and we camped 2nd line to the lake side. And last but not least the pizza was delicious!