A lakeside idyll: laid-back cycling and autumn hikes on Italy’s Lake Iseo

Smaller and less visited than Como and Garda, Lake Iseo harbours a gorgeous car-free island ideal for easy-going cycling and sightseeing Rust red and burnt sienna speckle the green mountain rising from Lake Iseo. Golden autumn sunlight shimmers on the water.

Monte Isola, Italy’s largest lake island, is a peak of sheer cliffs and dense forest, dotted with old fishing hamlets and hillside villages, each as pretty as the terraced villas of Lake Como and Garda, but with far fewer visitor s . I arrive at the small port town of Peschiera Maraglio – where striped wooden boats jut from the water like the gondolas of Venice – on a ferry from Sulzano, a five-minute hop across the water. “Only three people on the island are allowed to own a…