Water: I never learn.

I will never learn.

Last weekend I had a much needed solo break in Italy. I’d never been before, and I was excited for some alone time. Which meant my brain went “squirrel!” and forgot probably the first bit of advice I’d have given any of you.

Water.

Italy - entirely predictably, is hot.

And I went for a nice walk, because of course I did.

This walk doesn’t get a sandwich rating. It was too hot for sandwiches. It gets rated two espressos and a stracchiatella gelato.

I started at about 9am, in Bergamo Citta Bassa - the low city, the newer bit of Bergamo, a lovely small city in Lombardy with cheap flights from Edinburgh. By new, we mean that although it was always a suburb of the city, from Roman times, most of the buildings are late 19th and early 20th century. At this point, it was cool, and shady, and I left my brain in the B&B.

I mean, look at it. All innocent.

Up I wound my merry way, until I reached the massive fortifications of the Venetian walls.

These are UNESCO listed. They were built by the Venetian empire as their most westernmost point, the maritime empire’s great hinterland being at its peak. They’re huge, and currently full of cute nesting birds, including a new one to me - the European Serin, a sort of bright yellow finch the size of a sparrow. Blackcaps were singing, the air was still cool, the lions were goofy looking. As an aside - what is it with goofy looking lions in the renaissance? They had artists that could depict the single tear not yet falling from a grieving mother’s eye, but all their lions look like Derpy Tiger from Kpop Demon Hunters.

At roughly this point, I thought to myself, maybe I should have packed some water. I will buy some later.

I wanted to see both Botanical Gardens - there’s a small one in the city and a larger one in a valley nearby, less than an hour from town even on foot. The one in the city was very close, and very close to Marianna, the famous cafe and alleged home of Strachiatella Ice-Cream. It was a little early for gelato for me, so I stopped for a coffee and a croissant. Duolingo tells me croissants are cornettos in Italy, but in Lombardy, they tend to refer to them as brioche.

The Botanical Garden was up another little hill, past an old powder store and lizard home, and up a winding path with some kittens playing. It’s a lovely little garden.

It’s also a very shady garden, with lots of water features and a great view of the surrounding valleys. I saw a bird of prey - possibly a kestrel, although it seemed a bit big for that. The guidebook tells me the landscape here is “pre-alpine.”

Now, at this point, I decided there was a non-zero chance of actually dying of heat exhaustion, so I came back down from the garden and got a bus to find some lunch. Then I resumed my walk at La Marianna later, having done some other touristing.

Without water. Because I never learn.

The next stage of the journey was to head up the Funicular to San Vigilio, assuming there would be somewhere to buy water there. I’m very glad I didn’t attempt to climb it. There was an organised run, and the waiters from a nearby Michelin Starred restaurant were dumping champagne buckets of ice over some very willing runners.

I mooched round to the castle, had a look at it, then followed the helpful sign to the other botanical gardens.

The path here takes you down a genuinely steep hill, that eventually turns into an actual staircase. And I suddenly felt very dizzy indeed at the thought of climbing back up without - as I might have mentioned - adequate hydration. I was clever enough to curse myself but not quite clever enough to turn back early.

At the foot of the stairs, to my massive relief, was a public drinking fountain. I had a good drink, felt better, and followed the road round to the right.

Then I thought about it properly. There was nowhere to buy water, and no obvious cafes. It was not getting cooler. This was clearly not the sort of road where I could reasonably expect any more miraculous drinking fountains.

It would not enhance my holiday to be found unconscious by a passing Italian dog walker and have to figure out how to claim for a trip to the hospital for IV fluids, and I was no longer sure I was being over dramatic.

So, I called it. One botanic garden was enough. I checked google maps and there was a way back to the foot of the funicular, without going back up all those steps. And - hooray! - the route passed that drinking fountain again.

I did promise everyone a blog about being bad at hiking. This was less a hiking fail and more a complete absence of any common sense at all, and a standing reminder that sometimes quitting is a lot better than doing yourself a mischief.

I rewarded myself for my common sense in the first decent looking cafe I passed. Social media vs reality being what it is - there’s a litre bottle of water just out of shot.