Como-tion

The main purpose of this blog is to enable me to think up swimming related puns. 'Como' is so rich with possibilities that I have decided to go for a simple and straightforward pun. Lake Como is also as rich with possibilities as it is with the impossibly rich. We (Moorhouse and Bennett families) were lucky enough to be staying with one of their number in a beautiful house by the Lake a couple of miles from George Clooney's place and just down the lake from where part of Casino Royale was filmed (Daniel Craig rather than David Niven version).

At the house there was a decent sized outdoor pool where Maddy demonstrated her total confidence in the water and Amy decided to take off her arm bands and swim under water for as long as she could hold her breath. Naturally the pool featured in the daily 'phys' routine for Dom and I too.

We mostly used the Lake for wake boarding but one day we all went out for a turn in the speedboat. Stopping

to take in the ancient looking houses dotted among the wooded hills and hugging the shore we all decided to take to the water. Amazingly for water so deep and so close to the Alps it is perfectly warm. All the children jumped in from the boat and swam, unconcerned with the 400m of water below them.

So while there was fun to be had on the Lake, my thoughts naturally turned to swimming across from Moltrasio to the town on the other side. It is probably less than a kilometre of warm fish filled clear water but it is fairly busy and the traffic tends to be fast. However with a safety boat it would be safe. Did we use the boat to enable this challenge? No, we never got around to it. only on the last day did we recognise this missed opportunity. So we have unfinished family business in Italy, maybe next year.