Lago Carera is barely a lake any more: a damp, reedy hollow and peat bog below the village of Fiavè, in the Giudicarie valleys of western Trentino. Yet in the Bronze Age this was a lakeshore crowded with houses on wooden piles, and the waterlogged peat preserved their timbers, tools and food remains for three and a half thousand years. Fiavè is one of the pile-dwelling sites of the transnational World Heritage Site covering prehistoric settlements around the Alps, and a museum in the village shows what came out of the bog.
The landscape is a broad, open upland of meadows and forest, with the walls of the Brenta Dolomites rising to the north and the gentler ridges above Lake Garda to the south. This is the Bleggio area, famous for its walnuts, and the region of San Lorenzo in Banale nearby is known for ciuìga, a smoked sausage made with turnip. It is a quiet, farming country, much less crowded than Garda only twenty minutes away.
For riders the best approach is from Riva del Garda or Arco, climbing past Tenno and its turquoise lake to the Passo del Ballino, then down into the valley of Fiavè. It is a lovely road: steep, twisting hairpins above the lake, then a flowing run through forest and meadow with excellent surfaces and much less traffic than the roads around Garda. From Fiavè you can continue to Ponte Arche, home of the Comano Terme spa, and on through the Sarca gorges to Tione or towards Molveno and the Brenta.
Weather in the Giudicarie is mountain weather. Summer afternoons bring thunderstorms that build over the Brenta and can drench the valleys within minutes, while spring and autumn have crisp, clear mornings with fog in the hollows. In winter, snow and ice are common on the higher stretches, and Ballino, while not high by Alpine standards, can be icy in shade.
Fiavè is a small village, so for reliable fuel go to Ponte Arche or down to Arco, nine kilometres away as the crow flies but further by road. Arco also has a beautiful old centre under a castle on a cliff, plenty of cafés and the whole climbing and cycling culture of the northern end of Lake Garda.