Foggy Mantua

Mantua was the place for two very foggy runs. On the first day we headed out in search of the bike path shown on the map, which should take us from our hotel very easily to the lake shore of the first of Mantua's three lakes. We couldn't find it so ran along a busy road for a while until we could cross the railway lines (lots of them) and found a park by the lake. The fog was a shock! It had a lovely effect on the scenery however, trees shrouded in fog and a hint of the lake nearby.
We ran through this and further parks on dirt tracks and saw few other people, but heard trains coming into the station close by. There was some bird activity and a couple of fishermen. It was the coldest we've run in so far in Italy.
When we came to a junction and a path heading under the railway lines Denis turned off. I didn't because I didn't realise where we were exactly. I continued straight ahead on a sort of bitumen boardwalk built out into the lake, crossed some more parkland and negotiated a rather slippery bridge, then found myself among houses and saw a sign for the Mantua to Pescheria del Garda bike path. The bike path seemed to follow a canal.
I opted to turn back at this point, and it was only then I realised I had crossed on the causeway between two of the lakes. Silly me. I had intended to follow the shore line of each of the three lakes, not to cross between them.
When I got back to the junction with the trail under the railway line I went under the railway line, which is how I had intended to go in the first place. This path took me through parkland within sight of the Centro Storico and it was very nice. It was still foggy but you could see the old buildings and towers. Although the sightseeing boats moored along here didn't look like they were about to see much activity.
I followed the path as far as it went, only a couple of kilometres, then turned back and retraced my outward route home. The fog was lifting a bit. For the last part I found another bike path that was slightly away from the busy road and took me to a last little park. 13 kilometres of nice running.
On the second day it was even more foggy, right from leaving the hotel, and we did find the bike path that started near the hotel. But it wasn't a great find because it just followed the main road until we reached that junction under the railway lines where we had parted company yesterday. So from there we continued along the lakes to the end of that path, but sadly there were pretty much no views of the Centro Storico due to the fog. The path was also rather more slippery with frost.
Here we separated and I retraced the last bit then went across the lake. The reason was that I had not been able to check what I'd done yesterday on the map so I wanted to see once more where I'd been. The path on the boardwalk across the lake was very slippery.
Finally I ran the length of the parks back to where we had started out yesterday, in some ways the calmness of the fog made this the loveliest part of the run, and took the nicer bike path home. A good 10 kilometres.