The handsome old town with its sturdy Venetian tower near the shore and its broad front almost level with the tideless lake might be called the capital of the Garda. It is however neither of the Veneto nor Lombardy: it is in Trentino, a region where Austrian government is still remembered by old inhabitants. Riva’s lake front is a scene of bustle and change, and so is the town which slopes upwards behind it on narrowing clambering streets full of little everyday shops and perfumed with the displays of florists, fruiterers and green-grocers.

Two major 20thC authors nearly met at Riva. D.H. Lawrence was here with his German bride in 1912. ‘Quite beautiful’, he wrote, ‘and perfectly Italian… roses, oleanders and grapes in the gardens.’ A few weeks later that profound and original writer Franz Kafka came on holiday. ‘Riva was very important to me’, he wrote. He lost his virginity and composed the enigmatic story The Hunter Gracchus, inspired by a ‘clumsy old craft’ which lay moored at Riva’s flat quayside.

Every morning the breeze takes hundreds of dinghies out from Riva, every afternoon the never-failing land breeze brings them back (just as well, since many are crewed single-handed by sub-teenagers). With them go the windsurfers: the Garda’s northern shore is the world metropolis of windsurfing, thanks to those predictable winds. All afternoon the multi-coloured sails and the surfers in very wet wet-suits are swept ashore. It makes for some hilarity among the spectators who line the grainy beach between Riva and Torbole.