So that is it. Home tomorrow. I leave you with images of Ferrara. There could be a lot worse places to leave you, and no, this is not where they make very flashy sports cars. This place is like a mini, fabulous Florence without a coach party in sight. In fact there are no cars in the centre to disrupt the seemingly endless flow of the bicycle. Many of the riders are particularly pleasing on the eye.

We hit gold with the hotel, for a start. A little bijou place on a central piazza, opposite the castle. Then the upgrade to a room with a small balcony looking directly onto the ancient Continue reading →

OMG. What a shock to the senses. The last time I spoke to you I was in the peaceful tranquility of La Marche, alone with the farmland, the soaring buzzards, the pool and mama Anita’s cooking. I have come 250+ km north to Padua, a university city in the same mold as Oxford, established yonks ago but in comparison to the past two weeks so hot and busy and full of people and noise and bikes and trams and shops and gelatos. It is wonderful but such a shock to the system. Welcome back to reality and back-home normality. Oxford in a 34° heatwave. Enjoy the churches, the piazzas, the shade, when you can find it.

Eating out in Cupramontana gives you Gina’s, a pizza restaurant, Rosina’s a few miles out of town with a glorious terrace overlooking the surrounding hills & Ristorante La Orietta within the medieval, walled core of the town.

But I must spend some time telling you about the special delights of eating in Trattoria Anita. This can be found down a narrow, dark, cobbled street beside the butchers, under a totally inappropriate sign showing a golywog drinking a cup of coffee.

The first doorway is into the kitchen of open charcoal grills and steaming, aluminium pots & pans where three elderly, hunched mamas pirouette around each other in the space in the middle.

The second door is the entrance to a time capsule taking you back 70 years when it was OK to have signs like that hanging above your door. Four tables, covered in white tablecloths, covering red gingham, are positioned on each side of the narrow space, a counter, behind which are shelves of ancient, crusty bottles containing different coloured spirits, faces the entrance, a doorway that leads into the kitchen and a fridge unit holding two types of wine-white in loosely corked bottles and red in those old Corona clasped 1litre jobbies, about 20 of each.

Yes, we can eat. Papa, aged about 75, appears and shows us to a table. A bottle of gassed water and a bottle of white is dumped on the table. There follows 5 minutes of sign language with papa grumbling away in discontent, where we exchange these for still water(we get a bottle of tap, so we keep the fizzy) and a litre bottle of home-produced red, which is surprisingly good and has gone by the end of the evening.

No menu is immediately obvious. A 4th, younger lady, by that I mean later 40’s, who also speaks only Italian, appears at the table and gabbles through the premier platas. Recognising tortellini and ravioli we choose the former. Papa comes out of the kitchen with a tray of small curled pasta, covered in cream and parmesan and filled with cheese and bacon pieces, he serves us and retires, mumbling about something or other. The food is absolutely delicious.

Meanwhile the room is starting to fill up. Local Italian families take the tables in the room and get the same food as us. But hey, they keep coming. Two police officers, with guns, mother and child, pairs, threes, larger groups know their way to the hidden door which leads, via a single pointing finger to ‘upstairs’.

Papa has a problem. He appears with a piece of cotton wool protruding from a nostril, which doesn’t look good. As he returns from the door and showing some people upstairs, he gestures and the plug falls, to land, much to the surprise of the customers, on the table in front of him. They accept this invasion of their space and carry on eating as papa returns to the kitchen, never to be seen again.

His serving duties are taken over by mama. Mama is stooped with age yet skips around the joint, involved with everything. She explains, in a high, fluttery voice, the meats that are available for the secondi. Acorn Antiques comes to mind. She is lovely, breaking into a huge smile when ever a dish is complemented.

We spot the only menu, a hand written poster on the inside of the door, which helps us choose the rabbit (and that is what you get, cooked in oil, garlic & tomato-delicious) from the 4 available, all served with pots or tom gratin.

Dessert is the only slightly disappointing element of this wonderful, home-cooking experience so I’ll gloss over that as I don’t want to leave on a sour note. Coffee was great and the bill ever greater. This was a true family meal, cooked by the family, served by the family and prepared by the family, for locals. If you are ever nearby this is so worth the effort. Thank you mama.

Having seen, over the past days, the turquoise strip lining the horizon in the far distance, it was time to leave the peace and tranquility of the Marche countryside and have a day at the seaside. On reflection, a mistake.

An hour down the motorway to Ancona and then, a few miles out of town, the map suggested a narrow, picturesque lane down to a bay. Clues to what we would find lay in our approach. Firstly, stopping off on the cliff-top to see, in the distant haze, the waters of the Adriatic and a shimmering beach covered with row after row of different coloured sunbeds lined up like regiments preparing an attack. The battalion stand like small-scale, model soldiers, on station, firm and erect, facing the appealing waters, stretching away as far as the eye can see. Preparing to attack or defend what? The sea? Hmmmm.

With trepidation we follow the tarmac down. Like an evacuation, cars are parked, nee abandoned, on every spare bit of road, every field. We get down the bottom. Both beach car parks are full. ‘Park your car up on the field a km away with the other thousand motors and get the shuttle bus down’. OMG. What must the beach be like!!

So we cut our losses and abandon that plan. We take the cliff road to Soroli. A picturesque town high on the cliffs above the coast and, yes, the car parks and rocky beaches way, way below.

The place is almost empty. I suppose everyone has booked their sunbeds for the day and is roasting down on the rocks. Here we find our one nugget, our small piece of calm and class. In the shade of a fig tree, outside a small boutique hotel we have a simple lunch- canelloni stuffed with assorted seafood, a couple of glasses of the local white and apricot tart to finish up with. Heaven. The high spot of the day.

Then back in the car, down to Sunbed Strip and Umbrella City and the angled, wooden beds of browning, burning bodies on one side of the road and the parked heat-locked cars parked on the other, before giving up, hot and exasperated, and heading for the the cool breezes of the hills, back to our peaceful base. Why did we go out in the first place?

Today is a drive over to Pergola to pick up the trail again. The countryside remains the same but the further west, the higher the land gets and the more alpine the scenery and the architecture becomes.

Pergola is another ordinary but charming, warm place on the route. Narrow streets lead through from one sunny side to another creating shady patches for the locals at play. Animated chatter and card schools seem to be the order of the day.

The castle at Frontone can be seen from miles away standing erect over the hills and low mountains of its immediate neighbourhood.

Close up it stretches up high into the sky whilst the rest of this cobbled medieval village shudders in its shadow. The views from the walls show how much the landscape is changing.

The last place on this mini tour is Cagli. Again a huge fortress guards the entrance to the town. Once negotiated it is a downhill walk through the streets to the central plaza where wonderful faded buildings create a perimeter of flaky plaster and ancient, muted whitewash. The locals, as everywhere, collect in groups to chatter the evening away.

So that’s it. You could drive on a few km to see the view from the top of Mt. Catria. Or you could have dinner in Cagli and call it a day. I decided on the latter.

Whenever you get a chance to explore a new area, ignore the glittery postcards, the guide books and head for the back roads. Of course a car is essential to get you away from the main tourist sights and onto the those little narrow roads that reveal surprises and amazing sights around every corner. This is a 40 km route in La Marche that is a little gem of a journey that takes in a collection of hidden treasures for the intrepid traveller.

The route runs along the ridges from west to east, south of Urbino nd ends in the foothills of the high hills and mountainds of Italy’s central spine. Beautiful country spreads out on both sides of the road, rolling away to the distant horizon in folds.

This is enough, in itself, to take one’s breath away but wait until you stop at some the places along the way. Ostra Vetere is a sign of things to come when it appears in the distance above the farmland with its medieval facade becoming larger and then falling away behind me as I drive past.

I am heading for Corinaldo to start my little tour. The only sign that this place is about to give up its wedding cake secrets is the large fortified gate in the middle of town. Through the arch round the corner and there is the medieval escalator of stone steps to take punters into the heart of this pretty, peaceful place and, yes, a wedding has taken place and the happy couple pose in front of this romantic backdrop, snapped by cameras and a whirring drone. The only other people here are a scattering of folk finishing their lunch in snug little terrace restaurants.

Mondavio sounds l like the country from a Marx Brothers’ film. It doesn’t look that impressive from a distance. Up close and intimate it becomes a set for Game of Thrones, not that I’ve seen a single episode.

A cobbled-streeted villages with its 12th century church merges with its main protector with a moated 13th century castle, all made from bricks. They must have needed millions and millions and so clever. The fortifications curve and flow around the town, the lines built to. presumably divert cannon balls along their contoured fronts.

San Lorenzo in Campo is an small, charming, ordinary town. We hit it later afternoon a the locals chatter in their favourite patches of shade.

This lot thought it hilarious that their 2-stroke road-friendly, three-wheeled, vans were the focus for us visitors. I asked them to pose with their vans and they agreed with great hilarity all round.

To be continued.

It’s Saturday. Up early and a short drive into Cupramontana for provisions for the weekend. Nothing is open tomorrow, Sunday. So into the car, first gear & 20km per hour up the white gravel track to reach the metal road into town. Hills to the left, hills to the right, hills in front and hills behind. Up and rolling, bending down and over, roads and tracks squeeze around bubbles of woods and trees, stoned villages close and far away on tops and in valleys and through fields with every hue of browny earthiness. Every metre has a view across this rolling patchwork of awesome agricultural colour mixes.

It is like moving across an artist’s palette, driving from one colour to the next as ploughed earths mix it up with harvested grasses and rows of vines stand next to clumping trees that abound with fruit – walnuts and pomegranates and olives. Textures, shapes, rural colours crowd in on your eyes and your senses.

So the first stop is to get in to the bakers. Now the Italians do many things perfectly – pasta, pizza, fish, wine, coffee, but bread is not on this list.Usually it takes the form of snubby loaves with hard middles and even harder crusts the are past their best within 30 minutes or so of baking. So when you have a recommendation that the local baker’s fresh loaves are to die for, you go for it, especially as they tend to go before 1030. Park outside, straight in and a fresh crispy French stick is on the lunchtime menu.

The next up is the butcher. This is found down the small side street with a narrow entrance with a pink, porky pig above the door. They love their pork around here. On a narrow table a lady is selling crackling in every form and just crackling- ears, tails, cheek flaps, every bit of skin you can imagine large and small. We have a bit of friendly agro trying to order meat. Avoiding the stare of the white skinned rabbit, complete with head and long neck attached, snuggling around a large carrot, the campaign starts. We want duck. A picture of 2 plump duck breasts comes to mind, like what might be found in Waitrose. None are obvious. Using Google we show signor the word. He mutters under his breath, goes out the back and gets his wife. Ah yes, she leans over, moves some carcasses about and comes up with a whole duck. We hold up two fingers for 2 breasts. You want two she says. No, one finger, duck, but 2 breasts. This goes on for a few minutes until we agree on one duck that she will cut up. Next problem. How do we want it cut? Firstly legs, neck, wing are lopped off with a chopper and put in a bag. Then the bird is halved with an electric saw. Then one half is cut into slices with a big chopper and the other into a front half and a back half with an even bigger chopper. Never had this problem in Waitrose. Now we gotta cook it!

Very good duck in plum sauce, Hazel.

The grocer is a lot easier. We can stand there and just point at tomatoes and lettuce and onions and melons and peaches put them in a bag, say ‘grazie mille’ in our best Italian and move on. The candlestick maker was supposed to produce anti-mosquito coils and citronella candles. Sadly the village had no candlestick maker but we did find some coils in the local super mercado.

After a very necessary cup of coffee in the square it was back in the car and home. Mission accomplished. You want to see the quality of the local entertainment and live music? Come over on the 18th. It’s free!!!!

If you have never heard of Urbino then put it on your list of Italian cities to visit. It is a Renaissance city on par with the greats of Florence & Rome & Siena but without the tourist scrum. Firstly Frederico da Montefeltro, who was lord of the place during the Renaissance, 13th century for those of you who are a bit unclear on history started the trend. He attracted the greatest men and artist’s of the time to turn his palace into the cultural centre of Europe. Raphael took his first painting steps here.

The next period of splendour came in the beginning of the 18th century when Clement XI became pope and his family began a programme of construction of civil and religious buildings.

Finally the University was established in the late 19th century and set about implementing a whole load of architectural renovations.

What you get is a real mixture: a wide main street lined by the huge grand palace, the imposing, towering cathedral, lording churches, tall & elegant buildings housing apartments and businesses. Narrow streets lead up & down off the ridge to create a grid pattern of bricked splendour and clay-tiled grace.

Arriving at 11 the carpark is half empty and the rear walls of the city stretch high up above. Oh, lord. How many steps to reach the top and in this heat! My heart falls. Bt HEY, this is Italy. There, over by the shadow of the wall is the entrance to…… the lift. 50 cents takes one person up 4 floors to the main promenade around the ramparts. BRILLIANT.

So, into the bright sun, a coffee to prepare the soul for the tourist trap that awaits. Up the medieval tiled steps, around the corner to the top of the main street…. there is no one there, well almost no one. Down the bottom there is a group of about 16, waiting outside the church. Sadly, the only thing to let the place down is the arrival of an incongruous, red and white plastic tourist choo-choo train . The queue quickly climbs aboard and off it goes, taking them off in its 3 x 21st century carriages to circumnavigate this wonderful classic city, never to be seen again.

And I do mean enjoy this place ‘without the tourists’. No bustling crowds, only one hawker selling religious books, no queues to get into any museum, civilised wanderings in palaces and streets, tables available in cafes & restaurants for lunch, gelatos on demand.

Many of the sights of Urbino are around on the streets both in terms of locals and wonderful architecture.

Sadly the cathedral is closed following the earthquake.

The Palazzo Ducale di Urbino, Frederico’s place is worth a visit. Not only the building itself, dating from the 13th century, but also the range of paintings by artists like Raphael, Bocatti & Alberti da Ferrara amongst others, sounding a bit like models Italian motorbikes. I have to pinch myself. Most of these many, many pieces date from around 1400. Many are painted onto wooden panels, doors, straight onto walls as frescoes and woven into huge tapestries tho cover the walls. Carvings abound around gargantuan fireplaces, doorframes & cornices.  All slightly overawing.

Easily spent 5 hours there, wandering the streets and popping into churches and gardens and piazzas before descending in the lift for the short journey down the coast and home.

Put Urbina on your list.

Having spent a few days cooling off in the pool it is time to get those explorer’s boots on …well my Birks. The first place to pick off the map, which is close by, is Jesi. It stretches out along a ridge and boasts a medieval centre on the site of the Roman forum. We hit it on Assumption Day when most of Italy is in church or at the beach. The place is empty except for a bit of holy chanting coming from the churches and some conversation from the only bar open in its long , wide pedestrianised streets. Most of the buildings leading up to the square are tall, rather grand 17th century properties which provide cooling shade wind relief from the baking sun.

Parking is easy, at least.

Cingoli is one of those walled, fortified, hilltop villages. We caught it as they were opening up for a wine tasting event. However tempting the drink/driving laws made me an observer rather than a participant. Still, I could enjoy the preparations and observe the Italians at play. There are so many yappy little dogs in Italy tangling their owners up in cafes and on the streets. I have never seen so many chiwow-was. Sorry, not sure how you spell it and can’t really be bothered as they are a poor excuse for a pet/dog.

The best discovery was the town of Treia. Heading elsewhere, it jumped out at us on a hilltop in the distance as we drove past and demanded that we visit.

A Roman settlement set up on a high ridge on the road from Rome to the port of Ancona. It was such a gem to find – peaceful, classic, imposing.

And then I met this chap. If you look closely you can sees that his short, shorts have prints of scooters on them. Is he Italy’s first mod? He must have thought he looked good as he stopped and posed for me. What do you think? Out of 10?

You may have wondered where I’d got to. There again, maybe not. Any way, I’ve spent a few days settling into my Italian home for the next two weeks. I have come 100 or so miles south, just inland from Anconna. This country side stretches away from the tops of rolling hills in every direction. Gentle valleys contour around slopes and folds of land like the swirls created by a gymnast ‘s ribbon. Fields of browns & tans and earthy hues jigsaw together with the green bubbles of deciduous trees and woods. Farms and barns are scattered over the land, in between the steeples and spires and walls of hilltop villages which draw the visitor like a magnet. In the distance the panorama is framed by the turqoise waters of the Adriatic around a rim of truncated volcanoes that explain why this area is subject to earthquakes.

This is the view from our terrace:

My home is set down a ‘white road’, rather a pitted track which one can get up if driven in first at 20km an hour. I am surrounded by the patchwork fields of La Marche. My silence is only disturbed by the call of circling buzzards and in the distance the metallic squeaking of harvesting tractors that quietly roar their wayup and down the gradients and then chugger to each other as they summon up the strength for another run. Within a few hours the crop is harvested & taken off, the remnants bailed and left littering the field in haphazard cuboids and deep silence descend around me again.

Cupramontana is the closest settlement of any size, just up the road. Not a lot goes on here. As the day comes to an end and the buildings give up their heat, the locals grab a chair or find a seat in the shade and ponder over events and share anecdotes and gently wind down with friends and neighbours before disappearing inside as darkness falls. Everyone seems comfortable in their groups which tend to be gender and age specific with little mixing it up.

Can life really be that simple?

All memories of yesterday’s storm are forgotten when drawn curtains reveal solid blue sky. Today Ravenna’s secrets are to be unlocked. This is why I love Italy. To walk around narrow streets and piazzas, shaded by ancient buildings and chapels and churches and statues on pillars and surrounded by history and culture and food and coffee. Cafes with tables line the cobbled streets with men drinking their espresso behind their spread newspapers as I seek that restaurant for dinner where the locals will be eating. A gentle trickle of folk pass – mamas with shopping bags half full, classy ladies struggling to keep up with their scuttling dachshunds, tattooed youth on their way somewhere or other. In these car-free streets a constant stream of cyclists gently avoid the pedestrians with a tinkle of a bell – sexy girls with long tanned legs in short shorts, elegant moustached gentlemen and the whole gambit of Italian society on their way to work, to shop, to play.

Nothing out of the ordinary you might think. It sounds like a typical Italian town. But Ravenna is like a geologist’s display cabinet. It has been the capital city of three different civilisations in its time and so is quite an important place. From 400 AD the early Christians have impacted on its society and its buildings. Religious buildings cover the old centre, mostly red-bricked. Crack their dull, dusty shell open and be aghast. As each reveals their glistening, sparkling, crystalled inside,yourr breath will be dragged from your body in awe. Mosaics have used as an art form for centuries to decorate and commemorate the inside of churches and mausoleums. Here are a few.

I am going to start with the old library which is upstairs in the new library. Whilst not a mosaic in sight it feels to me like the Bodleian in Oxford and I wanted to share.

The crypt of the church of San Francesco its mosaics underwater. You may be able to spot the carp.

The Mausoleum di Galla Placidia, an important lady of the 13th century, is small and intimate and glorious. Mosaics, remember. Little bits of tile.

Basilico di San Vitale has these positioning around its dome but the whole alter is surrounded by a gargantuan spread of mosaic saints.

Battistero degli Ariani, Basilica di Apollinare Nuono and the Neonian Baptistry are three more temples to the mosaic.

Well here we are again. Like a cosy pair of slippers, I am in Italy once more. Starting off in Bologna to get everything together. Well, you have to plan a trip properly. So, fly in, pick up a car, check in to hotel for one night, a beer in the back streets of this impressive city …..

…..pick up Hazel, sleep and hit the road.

I choose the straightest of straight Roman roads that runs from Bologna to Rimini for at least 60 miles, without a bend or diversion. Straight as a die (what does that mean?). There are three towns on the line. The first is Imola.

Under a blue, blue sky, I wander the almost empty streets, disturbed by the odd cyclist, the small clutter of pedestrians and the building work that goes on ahead of me (that’s a picture of a clock, by the way, printed with the windows on a screen to cover the manky scaffolding). Coffee is good. Almost afraid to admit a visit to the duomo, a worshipper peers out and hobbles off before anyone sees him.

The third town in this straight line to the Adriatic is Forli. A wander to the large, open space of the central square is worth it. On all 4 sides elegant buildings compete with each other for the accolade for the grandest frontage.

However, it is the Palazzio del Poste e dei Telegrafi that wins the prize hands down – a glorious edifice to the time when to be a postie was an essential role in any country that has aspirations on the world stage. Look & admire.

Now you might get a clue from this picture about the impending doom that is about to descend on Forli in the next 10 minutes. The skies darken and darken with every quickening pace back to the car. The timing is perfect – doors thunk as huge spots of rain thwack on the window and a whirl of winds rush and pound and glower and push all around the piazza. In the centre of town the buildings protect cycles & cars from the squally outbursts of torrential sprays from the mouth of the storm, accompanied by thundering claps and explosive lightning.

The real war zone lies on the plane tree-lined avenues leading out of town. Huge cannon balls of weather have blasted their wet, destructive force through the branches and trunks leaving them broken and maimed on the streets and parked cars below. A few of us try to slalom our way around the carnage, lights flashing as we avoid the dangers we can see but very aware that above, the wind still shakes the trees searching for weaknesses to drop down on our convoy.

Peering through the deluge of curtained rain and wooded obstacles, I follow the sat nav through the gloom. The wreckage becomes lighter, the sound of the storm becomes calmer and the rain patters then pitters and the world returns to normal. Having survived 30 minutes of wet, stormy hell and successfully found a way out of town, the road to Ravenna beckons. An hour later the clouds break, the sky resumes its heated blue and reason returns.