The last few days in Lazio bring Italian life to the fore. Firstly dinner at Il Ponto restaurant overlooking the stranded village of Civita do Bagnoregio linked to the ‘mainland’ by the long pedestrian bridge.

The following day is spent enjoying the space that is Vittorio & Beatrice’s home- they live in the far side during the summer & leave their guests in privacy to enjoy the rest of the house & the pool.

They ask us to join them for the evening at Beatrice’s parents home across the valley. A group of young opera singers have joined their mentor to train their voices and family & friends are treated to a performance on the terrace under the stars. A bass sings four cantatas and then we all join in with a song sheet in Italian – not quite to Rock Choir standard! This is followed by a traditional meal for the 17 of us including lasagna, potato & beetroot & copious amounts of the local red wine. I am now a convert to cow mozzarella.

It is with sadness that we leave Vittorio & Beatrice the following day. We came as guests and left as friends.

We drive across the farmland of Lazio, the scenery becoming less wooded as we move north via the Abbazia di Monte Oliveto Maggiore providing a haven of shade from the parched landscape of southern Tuscany-not that there were many monks in evidence; just the well heeled clientele at the exclusive restaurant.

It is then across the dry scraped landscape of Tuscany towards Umbria. Parched rolling farmland split only by lines of telephone wires, clusters of olive trees & vines, bubbles of mixed woodland, farm buildings ancient & modern and that quentissential feature of rural Italy – the lines & rows of cypress trees. But then on a hill in the distance appears the silhouette of a tower or a spire or fortifications with modern houses & flats huddled around its base. Around the next bend another similar settlement appears to continually reassure that life has gone on in this way for centuries.

The drive ends in Umbria where the scenery changes yet again with wooded hills leaving wide fertile river valleys in between and large fields of tobacco & corn.