That's the sound of the constantly lapping little waves of Lake Garda.

We're on the very southern shore of this huge body of water.

It's another bright sunny day. The sunlight just catching on the tops of these tiny

little wavelets that lap and lap and lap against the pebble shore. I can see in the distance

the mountains there's just some fluffy white clouds just

drifting across them and on the on the shore you can see people just laying out towels

catching a bit of sun getting ready for the race today.

A very special setting, the first time that I have been to Lake Garda,

during my short tenure at the Girod Italia, it's going to look amazing on the television.

And what is really noticeable about when we pulled in quite late last night and having dinner in the

restaurants and at breakfast and then I just went for a run this morning as well.

What is really noticeable is how this beautiful lake is geared up for tourism obviously although a lot of people live

here all year round wealthy people but the kind of tourists that they welcome

are from all over the world but they do have a slight tilt towards

German speaking tourists both Austrians and Germans themselves and that's a real noticeable feature of Northern Italy by the time you get up towards Veneto and Trento as well because it is driveable for people from Austria and Bavaria

the south of Germany just to come over and for as long as I lived in Germany I

had this sense that for there's a great

romanticism always has been about Italy in the German psyche and the German

romantic soul you only need to read Goeter and Schiller and the great 19th and 20th century novelists that Thomas Mann for example

had a big part of his soul was kind of stranded in Italy with death in Venice and Tony O'Kreger and novels like that.

But I think there's a difference between what the British romantic imagination of Italy is,

and that's reflected in where Brits tend to go on

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