View from the “Sentiero del Viandante” above the village of Lierna (ph. Luca Casartelli).

That branch of the lake of Como, which extends towards the south, is enclosed by two unbroken chains of mountains, which, as they advance and recede, diversify its shores with numerous bays and inlets. Suddenly the lake contracts itself, and takes the course and form of a river, between a promontory on the right, and a wide open shore on the opposite side (*) …

It is at this point (the description of which we have borrowed from a more qualified writer) that the ‘Sentiero del Viandante’ (Wayfarer’s Path) starts, a hiking route consisting largely of paths and mule tracks that runs along the eastern side of Lake Como and then continues into Valtellina, starting in Lecco and ending in Morbegno, for a total of about 70 km.

The cue to talk about this comes from the occasion of the landscaping project on the lakeshore that we publish on TSPORT 360: the ‘Sentiero’ in fact starts right here. The initial stretch from Lecco to Abbadia Lariana was only made feasible in 2020 with funds from the ‘Interreg V-A Italy-Switzerland 2014-2020’ cooperation programme, supplemented with resources from the two municipalities, making the international path, with its branches, all the way to San Bernardino, Switzerland, a reality.

And we talk about it in the “Outdoor Special Report” to which the issue 360 of TSPORT is dedicated, considering that trekking is a sport that is accessible to all, whose ‘venues’ are natural environments with paths that can only be travelled on foot: a very ‘sustainable’ sport, provided that the behaviour of hikers is careful and respectful.

Like other sporting disciplines, trekking also requires a certain amount of athletic preparation, enabling one to move from the simplest trails, which are also suitable for beginners or families with children, to the more complex ones, which require a refined technique: cases of improvised hikers getting lost or injured due to inadequate equipment are not uncommon in the news.

Trekking is therefore an ‘outdoor sport’ that deserves a mention on these pages, even though it cannot compete in terms of facility technology with the large and small projects dedicated to traditional sports and even the more recent ones, such as ‘urban’ sports, now promoted in the Olympic programmes, which we illustrate within the magazine.

(*) Translation of the incipit: “The Betrothed” by Alessandro Manzoni – The Harvard classics, edited by Charles W. Eliot, New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1909–14.