I have been saving Varenna, the way you save the best biscuit. The fishing village across the water from Bellagio, all sun-faded facades stacked above the ferry landing, with a lovers’ walk hugging the shoreline and, high on the cliff above it all, the Castello di Vezio… a watchtower that has been squinting down the lake for about a thousand years.
I did it the planned way: train to Varenna-Esino, then the walking trail up through the olive trees, a proper little pilgrimage that starts at half past nine and earns you the whole lake laid out like a map. But the castle has something better than views. The castle has owls.
Birds of prey live up there among the ruins, and meeting an eagle owl at close range rearranges your ideas about feathers. They are not soft. They are engineered… layered like roof shingles, barred like woodgrain, with two blazing orange headlights set into the middle of it all. He watched me the entire time, doing that slow-motion head rotation that owls do specifically to remind you who is apex around here.
Back down in the village the working list carried on: along the waterfront past Villa Monastero’s long garden wall, then the slow walk around the shoreline on the Passerella degli Innamorati, the red-railed lovers’ walkway that hangs just above the lake. Every town here saves its best drawing for the water’s edge. In between I did my last pages of the lake week… fast gesture studies, people on the ferry pier, a page of tourists who would not hold still (rude) and, once the light went honey-coloured, one more go at the owl from memory.
That closes out a full week of working the lake from the quiet end: Bellano’s painter, Bellagio’s bicycles, a buried town, a silk city, and an owl with a stare like a lighthouse. The sketchbook is fatter, the reference library is groaning, and the new series brewing in the back of my head has stopped whispering and started talking in full sentences.
The journey is not over yet… more from the road soon. Same pen, new pages.
Sunday was meant to be a rest day. Instead: a red train over the Alps, a walk through a century of melting ice, and two donkeys with the best address in Switzerland.
A business day in Como and Cantù, where silk built a city and lace built its neighbour. Talks with a silk printing house about printing ink work on fabric, plus 62 reference photos for the studio year ahead.
A day of sketching in Chiavenna and Piuro, the alpine town buried by a landslide in 1618. Mossy alleys, soapstone workshops, green-glass river water, and evening pages turning gathered photos into working ink drawings.
