It’s been a tough week. We’re holed up at a small hotel high in the Valdesa hills above Castelfiorentino – a small town between Pisa and Florence. There’s nothing to do except visit local hill towns, sample the wine, enjoy good weather and eat too much. I did bring my running gear with me but it has stayed resolutely in the drawer where I first unpacked it… my trainers, on the other hand, have seen rather more use. We are 6k from Castelfiorentino, and we haven’t hired a car – we prefer to get around using our feet, local transport and a bit of initiative – we figure we see more that way. Certainly our first walk to the town brought about a herd of floppy eared goats and a magical walk through some olive groves, and our second gave us our first game of ‘virtual lunch from the allotments’ yielding figs, grapes, leeks, tomatoes, chillies, artichokes and apples. We have made friends with the town’s sole taxi driver, who now positively leaps into action when he sees us coming out of the station – walking one way to town is acceptable, walking both ways is a bit much.
Evenings meals are superb, cooked by the hotel owner, Susannah, and always of four courses. Soup, pasta, meat (veggie for Guy) and a pud. We are FULL. And we have wine… be rude not to, and all that. One night I did stop half way through the pasta dish, but Susannah rushed out of the kitchens to find out what was wrong, and I haven’t had the heart to leave anything since. I’ll diet in Florence next week. To make up for the food intake I have been swimming – 120 lengths one day. It’s a very short pool…
[At this point I was going to add a lovely pic of the pool, just to make everyone jealous, but I can't - I think we haven't got enough internet speed to upload it. Or something technical... will try again when we get to Florence]
On Tuesday we went by train and bus to Vinci. Where Leonardo was born. I’m still recovering from the discovery that he’s called Leonardo da Vinci because he’s Leonardo from Vinci. I didn’t know there was a place called Vinci. Anyway, there is, it’s built on a hill and after looking at amazing machines in the two Leonardo museums you walk (well, we did, although we did seem to be the only ones) 3k up the side of a mountain to his birthplace. Which is 3 rooms in a little stone house being renovated. It’ll be nice when it’s finished… Back down again to the bus was almost harder than going up – very tough on the calf muscles. I thought of it as ‘training’ and abandoned my evening swim…
On Wednesday we decided to push the walking thing a bit further, and walked to Certaldo, a local hill town that we had already visited by train. We thought there was a walk through the fields and paths to Certaldo, but after a few kilometres we found ourselves on the main road, pounding along tarmac and trying not to be flattened by passing cars. We were told it was 16k, but it felt like more. We weren’t walking fast, we kept looking at the map, we stopped to put sun cream on, and we took a detour through a national park at the end but it did take us nearly four hours… we had earned our bruschetta and wine when we got there. And our poor calves were even tighter.
And on Thursday we did the only thing we had actually planned – a truffle hunting tour. Our guide, Paolo, was a dead ringer for Andrew Sachs, and with impeccable English which was just as well as our Italian is rubbish. I peaked too early, asking for two single tickets to Castelfiorentino via Empoli on the first day in Italian, and it’s been downhill ever since. Our calves were still incredibly stiff from the walk to Certaldo – going down steps was a nightmare, both of us eventually figuring out that a sideways, ‘crab-like’ movement was the least painful. But the truffle huting was only a gentle walk through some woods – no problem. We met the truffle hunter, Angelica, and her two dogs, Chervita and Bella. Bella was older and did all the work, Chervita was just learning and spent most of the time bouncing up and down wagging his tail and being hugely enthusiastic. As soon as we reached the woodland where we were going to search Bella wagged her tail furiously and began digging. Angelica was at her side in seconds, throwing doggy goodies around to distract Bella – the dogs are trained to adore truffles, and will eat them if they get to them first. She dug at the earth with a long trowel like thing and brought out our first truffle – about the size of a pea. ‘Piccolo’ was the general consensus, although it still smelt really pungent – extraordinary smell.
We spent an hour tramping through remarkably inaccessible bits of the woods, under brambles, through trees and over gnarled roots. An easy walk it was not, but our legs seemed to hold up ok. At the end we’d found a good handful of truffles, and Angelica gave us half of them to bring back to Susannah.
Then Paolo took us to San Miniato – a hill town where we walked up to the top of the tower for breathtaking views. Going up was fine. Going down was not. There were 143 steps in the tower, 95 on the path and then a further 43 in the town. I don’t think he noticed our crablike progression…
The tour concluded with a ‘truffle based lunch’ and, frankly, I lost count of the courses… there was truffle butter on bread, egg soup with truffles, tagliatelle with truffle shavings, poached egg with truffle, wild boar with truffle and olive sauce and then, just as I thought there couldn’t be any more, ricotta cheese with grated truffle… And wine. There was, apparently, truffle ice-cream too although thankfully we didn’t get that. We did get biscotti with Vin Santo – a very sweet (and strong – 18%!) wine to dunk the biscotti in…. good grief. Thoroughly stuffed, slightly tipsy and with aching calves, we were dropped back to our hotel where we haven’t really eaten since… and you know what?
I don’t think I like truffles…
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