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| Gonte Motor Caravan Park |
South of the Gottard tunnel everything has an Italian influence.
We stopped at the motorhome park in Locarno and had a look around and decided to move on around the Northern shore of Lake Maggiori and find a nicer place to stay.
This road has a couple of terrible sections, narrow and where the rock wall overhangs the edge of the road. Unfortunately this was also the place where we passed a truck with a typical mad Italian driver, to avoid the truck the RH mirror had to collide with the protruding rock!!
We passed through the Italian border at Valmara at 3:45pm and were waved through by the boarder guards. A few kilometres later the GPS was telling us to turn right to the Motor home parking area. We get suspicious when the GPS tells us to drive up the side of a cliff, as happens from time to time, but this time it was right.
The village of Gonte is located on the side of the cliff above the lake and the road to the village was a narrow very steep single lane. After a couple of hundred meters we had cars backing up in front of us while we crawled up in first gear.
The campground was worth it. it was terraced onto the side of the hill with each motorhome park having a staircase to a small private grassed courtyard (terrace) overlooking the lake.
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| The hamlet of Gonte by lake Maggiori Italy |
Gonte is located between Cannero Riviera in the north and Ghiffa in the south on the west side of Piedmont’s Lago Maggiore . Oggebbio is the topographic name for 15 villages scattered in the mountains down to the lake shore and stretching across the mountainside. Woods, elegant villas, beautiful gardens and churches overlooked by the highest bell tower in the Alto Verbano area The tower which was just above our campsite is 42 metres high.
Once we had settled in we had a stroll up into the village piazza through the village streets (walkways) to the little shop that keeps the locals supplied with essentials. Armed with pork chops we returned to the hymermobile to have a bbq dinner followed by a quiet evening with an Italian wine taking in the view over one of the great lakes of Northern italy.
