The Lake in September

The lake holds heat longer than the air does. Through September the water stays at a temperature you can swim in without a wetsuit or a discussion, and it is often warmer at the end of the month than it was at the start of June. The air cools first, in the evenings, and the mornings come with a light mist that burns off by nine.

What matters more than the temperature is the surface. In August the water is chopped up all day by boats, and the wakes cross each other in the middle of the lake until the light goes. In September the boats thin out and the wind pattern settles, so the early mornings are flat in a way they never are in high season. A swim from a jetty at eight, with the first ferry the only thing moving, is the answer most owners would give if you asked what the lake is for.

The swimming season ends, in practice, when the first serious rain arrives from the north and the temperature drops a few degrees in a night. In most years that is October. Until then, the water is the best reason to be here.

The lake has two named winds and both are more reliable in September than in August. The tivano blows from the north in the early morning, down from the Valtellina and the top of the lake, and dies away by mid-morning. The breva comes from the south in the afternoon, arriving later and more gently in September than it does in July, and it brings the sailing boats out from Bellagio and Domaso.

In August the pattern is broken by heat and by the storms that build over the mountains in the afternoon. In September it holds. That means you can plan a day on the water with some confidence: a crossing or a long run up the lake in the morning, lunch somewhere on the western shore, and a slow return before the breva fills in after two.

For anyone with a boat, this is the reason to keep it in the water until the end of October rather than lifting it out with the tourists. The moorings are quieter, the fuel pontoons have no queue, and the boatyards are between their two busy seasons.

The shops that stayed open through lunch in August close at half past twelve again. The bar in the piazza fills with the people who live there, at the times they have always used it, and the tables on the front are taken by conversation rather than by orders. Menus shorten. The dishes that belong to the season, the lake fish, the first of the mushrooms from the hills, come back onto them.

This is the month to be introduced to anyone. A boatyard, a gardener, a house manager, a builder who works on old stone: in August they are protecting their time from you, and in September they have time to think about your house. The winter's work is planned now, and the people who plan it are in the bar at seven.

The ferry company runs its summer timetable until early October, so the fast boats and the mid-lake shuttles are still crossing, but they are crossing with room on them. A lunch in Bellagio from Tremezzina is a ten-minute ride and you walk straight on. The car ferry between Cadenabbia, Bellagio and Varenna, which has queues of an hour in August, loads and goes.

The practical consequence is that September is the month to leave the car where it is and use the water for everything on the far shore. The timetable changes in October and thins through the winter, so the window for treating the ferries as a bus service is exactly this one.

The first week of September is the changeover, and it has the last of the summer's crowd in it. The second and third weeks are the ones owners keep for themselves: the season's visitors have gone, the second-home owners from Milan have not yet begun their autumn weekends, and the weather is at its most settled. The last week is the beginning of autumn proper, with the first rain from the north and the first evenings that need a jumper.

If you are looking at property, this is the month to see it. In August a house is shown at its most flattering and its most misleading: full of light, full of people, with the lake outside performing. In September you see what you would actually own for most of the year. The garden after a summer without you. The road in the rain. The village on a Tuesday evening. Every serious decision about where to be on this lake is better made in September than in July, because September is closer to the truth.

They treat September as a cheaper August and book the same things: the same restaurants at the same times, the same drive round the lake in a day, dinner rather than lunch, everything reserved in advance. The point of the month is that none of that is necessary and most of it is wrong.

Book nothing before noon. Swim first. Eat at one, at a table on the water that you could not have had a month earlier, and take the whole afternoon over it. Cross by boat rather than driving round. Leave the evenings to the light on the western shore, which is the one thing September does better than any other month, and which almost nobody sees.