Du Lac et Du Parc Grand Resort

The hotel's name promises a lake and a park, and only the park is its own work; Garda needs no help from anyone. It runs to seven hectares on the northern shore, with some 200 species in it. When disease got into the old palms, the landscape architect Stefano Mengoli took them out and replanted with natives, holm oak and stone pine among the olives and cypresses, though there are still palms and bamboo for good measure. Among the trees is a cream front with green shutters, and behind everything the mountains drop steeply into the water. It is a big, sprawling place, and the grounds are beautiful.

A good week here would be spent outside, on the red clay tennis court or out on the lake with Sailing Du Lac, the sailing school, in a catamaran or a kayak. Ours, in late September, was not a good week for weather, which is hardly the hotel's fault, and we used very little of any of that. What we did use, and often, was the health club, and it was very good: the Cristallo pool is indoors and heated, and there is a sauna and a Turkish bath. It saw a great deal more of us than the pools outside, which that week were mostly scenery.

We never ate at the hotel. It has three restaurants and sells half board, and we had drinks there, but every meal was in Riva del Garda, a short walk along the lakefront. Riva is also where the walking starts. From the town we went a long way up one of the mountains that come down into the lake, to some extraordinary viewpoints.

Our room was a basic double, and the rooms were fine; the ones to ask for have Vista Lago in their names and face the lake. Families and grown-ups each get a corner of their own: the Paolino Club takes children from three to ten, and the Relax pool, the sauna and the Turkish bath take nobody under 16. About 30 of the plants in the park carry a QR code with notes and pictures, for anyone who wants to know which of the 200 species they are standing under.