Baronci

Bronci

After three of our five weeks here it is time to report in. This time you will find us weary, not our usual selves. The reason we are tired and sore is because we’re spending a lot of our time cleaning up the olive fields before the harvest. In a normal year a local chap comes in and mows/strims the fields clean, but not this year. There is a tractor that belongs to a brother but it has a broken accelerator, making it too dangerous to use, so we are left with hand strimming everything. The only “respite” is to get out the hand secateurs to cut off the brambles around the base of the trees at ground level. Anything sharp needs to be trimmed as it will catch on the olive nets and rip them. Consequently I have a very sore neck and sore hands and Vicki has sore hands from using a big pair of loppers every day. Role on harvest time! It is supposed to start in the next few days but the olives don’t look ripe enough. Normally they pick when half the olives have turned black so they only have to strip the trees once – yes, all olives start green and turn black when ripe. After almost no rain here over summer we have had a lot recently, often accompanied by thunder and lightning. This has slowed the ripening significantly so we are hoping to get some picking in before we leave.

One of the unused rooms, with 'inhabitants' ...

What makes up for it all is the location. The old house (which I have mentioned before) is part 14^th Century, part 17^th) and split into three apartments belonging to each of the siblings of an Italian diplomat. I’m sure Marina, our host, has the best apartment as it has a lovely balcony on which I am currently sitting – with a Birra Moretti in hand – in the sunshine looking out over the heavily wooded hills in this rather remote spot. Some of the old rooms have a few surprises, like a stuffed condor! We’ve had a couple of trips into Florence so far – it is about 25km away – and a promise of a few days there before we leave. Marina has a lovely apartment in a townhouse there, dating from the 1860s and once again owned by her family then split into three apartments for the children. Her one has very high ceilings adorned with frescoes and mosaics on the floor, still looking very original.

Marina's apartment in Florence

Florence. Beautiful. Those two words go together so well. It really is the city of art – there are numerous galleries and museums, statues and beautiful buildings everywhere: churches, palaces of the Medici and other noble families, so much history. And the gelato shops and the shopping. It may be touristy but there are great leather jackets and shoes and bags and other clothes to buy. Pity our backpacks are full – anything new we buy means we have to throw something else out to make room! The downside to all this wonder is that Florence is seen as being very expensive for Italy and it is full of tourists, mainly American and Asian tour groups following their leaders. We love it though so we’re looking forward to our next visit. We'll do a separate post on Florence later ...

The staircase to the upstairs apartments

Being up here at Baronci has become a routine. Each morning we get up for our breakfast while Marina just has her coffee. Like most Italians she can’t function without one. We either work in the fields or doing odd jobs around the house while Marina drives down to the local village of Santa Brigida to get the newspaper and fresh bread. As the bread doesn’t have any preservatives – nor salt – it really needs to be fresh every day. Lunch is often bread, tomatoes, various slices of salami and mortadella (Vicki, somewhat unkindly, describes it as tasty luncheon sausage), and a selection of local cheeses. All washed down with oodles of Baronci olive oil. Then it is back to work for a couple of hours before showers and relaxing, while Marina cooks yet another wonderful meal for us. She hasn’t repeated herself yet either!  Dinner is washed down with oodles of wine.

Mowing the flagstones ...

Baronci consists of several olive fields and overgrown gardens plus a decent amount of forest. The forest is mainly chestnut trees that have been pruned (”coppiced”) to produce several small trunks. They would normally be cut quite young to create good straight poles but there doesn’t seem to be much of a market for them now so they have been left and are pretty messy and useless. The forest has public access – people can take anything but not cut the wood – so there are always people wandering through it picking up chestnuts or hunting for fungi. We have been for several rambles through the forest with Marina looking for fungi. Luckily she knows which are which as there are so many different types and I keep picking up the poisonous ones! The black ones and the yellow ones seem to be the best.

Baronci in the forest

The other inhabitants of the forest (apart from squirrels and foxes) are wild boar. The hunting season is from September to October and seems to be every second day. These days start with dogs barking and guns going off from early in the morning. They always sound so close so we are advised to take a radio into the fields or talk very loudly. Often we see groups of hunters standing around their cars in camouflage gear waiting to start, presumably after the mandatory coffee. Given the racket that sometimes occurs they are either very bad shots or just excitable. Our fields are full of trails from the pigs so there must be a lot around.

The lounge and dining area

Highlights of the first four months

We've been travelling for four months.  A wonderful evening recently prompted me to say it was one of the highlights of our trip, which got me thinking about the other special experiences we've enjoyed.

Catching up with old friends and family - particularly those we had not seen for years or decades.

The oh-so-cute fishing villages of Cornwall, particularly Polperro and Fowey.

Roche Rock and Restormel Castle.

Stepping out of the Leadenhall Market and seeing the Lloyd's of London building.

Discovering the dilapidated Merther Church and graveyard, where two of my great-great-great-great grandparents are probably buried.

Truro Cathedral where the choir was practicing while we were wowed by the architecture.

Our night out in Kingston-upon-Thames to see Jon Bird's Big Band.

Pizza and iced coffee with a friendly English-speaking Italian owner in Sanremo.

New Zealand lamb and Italian veges roasted in an outdoor wood-fired oven - melt-in-your-mouth delicious!



Exploring the ancient hill towns of Italy.

Being rescued by Albanians when we were transportationally-challenged in Triora.

Being swept down the Aare River in Switzerland - an adrenalin-boosting and body-temperature-lowering experience.



The reaction of the children to my slideshow of portrait images from the Polly Glot Ranch Italian children's English camp. We showed it to them on the last night of the camp and they laughed and cheered and blushed and smiled!  You can see the shortened and silent version on Youtube. 

The festa (evening festival of food, wine, music and dancing) in Moresco, where we might have been the only travellers present.

Eating figs, warmed by the sun and fresh from the tree .... actually, eating many figs!!

Dinner at Corrado's place in Montebuono.  Corrado is an Italian friend of our host in San Giorgio and was very generous - taking us sight-seeing and creating interesting and delicious meals for us, served outside with twinkling lights, wine in crystal glasses, crocheted table cloth, and the occasional bat zipping around. He also happens to be very interesting and charming.

Well, that's my list.  Nigel will probably want to add a few others .... :-)

Roma

As the old saying goes, Rome wasn’t visited in a day. For a place with so much history and so many artefacts from the ancient Roman through the Renaissance to the modern era, it is impossible to do it justice in just a day. But we tried. Had to, as we have spent the last two weeks just 1 hour north by train. We started with a combined train/metro/bus ticket for the day for just 9 euros, about half what the equivalent ticket costs for London. But what to do? There is so much to potentially cover we decided on a wander past some of the Roman ruins, taking in a sprinkling of churches, fountains, statues and public buildings, and a meander around some alleyways. Not to mention check out a few shops and an essential revival at a gelateria. No time to add in the Vatican or queue up to tour around any of the main sites. We just accepted that we’ll have to go back one day and see it in more depth.

Our particular visit started with the Colosseum and it is a big impact introduction indeed! It is no longer at the centre of a roundabout, so quieter and more accessible. And enormous. It is also the centre of all things Roman, with the ruins of the Forum, Palatine Hill, Circus Maximus, various triumphal arches and other buildings all nearby. It is also the centre of tour groups and getting your picture taken in a wedding dress. Very crowded, it must be horrendous in the peak of the summer tourist season. At least the Colosseum is so large it towers over everything and everyone else.

We chose to walk up and back along the Via Corso as many of the well-known sites lie a few blocks either side of it. A few of those sites easily visited (and free!) were:

San Pietro in Vincoli – a church that contained a glass box with the “original” chains that St Peter was locked up with in Roman times, plus a wonderful sculpture of Moses by someone called Michelangelo.

The Pantheon – the most complete Roman building, both massive and awe-inspiring. Thank you Marcus Agrippa. Check out the inside here.

Piazza Navona – containing three separate fountains of glorious statues.

Numerous churches – as long as you dress appropriately you can just wander in – at least they were mainly open – and see wonderful paintings and sculptures and religious artefacts.

The Trevi Fountain – absolutely enormous, but it really is a waterfall, not a fountain.

The Spanish Steps – not sure what the attraction is here as they seem to be just a place to sit.

Gelato shop – Essential. Pistachio and Coffee is my favourite.

All the buildings! – beautiful, colourful, textures ….

So, a great day out for us and one with so many beautiful things on display the 33C temperature was rarely noticed. Did it live up to expectations? Beyond. And we only saw a fraction of what is on offer and none of them in-depth. Yes, we have to work out how we can stay there to spend days wandering around …