"Write it first and see what happens..."

That's what Helen said when I was sitting here pondering what the title of today's post should be - not sure if that's her own strategy, or if she just wanted me to get started without any more delay with it being gone 8pm already.

After the more unsettled weather of the last few days (we went to sleep last night with flashes of lightning lighting up the bedroom and thunder crashing around), the house has started to cool by just a degree or two, which meant we had a better night's sleep - in fact, we didn't wake up until gone nine today (although, in our defence, we stayed up late (for us) and didn't turn lights out until half past midnight - that's late, for us).

So by the time we had had a lazy breakfast and caught up on email and social media, it was after 11am - the morning nearly gone already!!

We agreed yesterday evening that our weekend days seemed to work well as 'half-and-half': the morning spent doing something a little more self-indulgent and non-taxing, then doing something 'work'-related in the afternoon, giving us the best of both worlds.

So, with most of the morning gone and the weather still looking dry (albeit cloudy), we decided to head out and pay a brief visit to a couple more of the dieci castelli villages before lunch.

Before we could do that, though, Helen went to grab a pair of secateurs and asked if I could drive slowly along the drive. Various bits of the forest have started to encroach on the drive, making it perilous driving along it with the windows fully open and also making it more of an obstacle course for Helen running up and down it in the mornings, having to dodge large brambles here, bits of acacia tree there. So I inched along the drive while Helen hopped out of the car and trimmed back some of the worst offenders.

Brambles trimmed.

Getting rid of the thorny obstacles.

Once Helen was satisfied with the driveway pruning, we headed for Medicina, probably the nearest of the dieci castelli to us (other than Pietrabuona) as the crow flies, but with it being at a much higher altitude, it involved a long, slow drive with countless switchbacks to get there. The views on the way up were amazing and we had to stop a couple of times to take photos - partly because we could see our house and it gave us a completely different perspective of where we fitted into the landscape. We saw a countless other remote properties dotted around the hills not far from us, but ones that we had never seen before because of how they are tucked away in the woods.

View from the road to Medicina - looking south east.

Medicina is a small and very quiet hilltop village with a tiny little square in the centre and little alleyways and arches to walk around and under. Some of these villages are so sleepy and untouched that it takes only a small leap of imagination to picture what they must have been like five or six hundred years ago - it makes them really quite atmospheric. However, it's hard to imagine the fierce fighting that went on in these fortified villages all those years ago (when the cities of Lucca, Pisa and Florence were battling for control). There is little else to do in them now other than explore the narrow cobbled alleyways and take in the views, but we really quite like that. There's a quote from someone, somewhere that says 'tourism destroys the very thing it seeks' - wide words indeed, but not here, and that's why we like it.

Medicina's tiny little square.

Medicina.

After we'd explored the alleyways of Medicina, we headed back down the zig-zag road to the valley bottom and then took the next turning off - this time to Fibbialla, the next village in the valley. The less-than-accurate Italian maps (oh how we'd love an OS map of the area!) would have you believe that Fibbialla is close to the valley bottom (and indeed doesn't even mark the village of Medicina at all). The actual drive was very similar to the one to Medicina, involving lots of climbing, Almost as high as Medicina, Fibbialla sits close to the ridge of the hill it sits on, just like Medicina. The road to Fibbialla appeared to be a little less well loved and cared for, and quite a bit narrower too. This gave us quite low expectations for the village, but when we arrived it was as pretty as Medicina - once again very small, but with similarly great views from a slightly different perspective. Once again, we trod the alleyways enjoying the peace and quiet, and then decided to head off as the wind was starting to get up.

Fibbialla.

View from Fibbialla looking back down towards Pescia.

Fibbialla.

Fibbialla.

View from Fibbialla taking in Aramo and Vellano.

On the way down, we were afforded a wonderful view up the valley where we could see five of the dieci castelli villages spread out around the mountains in front of us. It took us by surprise and as such we didn't manage to get a photo - we didn't dare stay stationary for very long with the road being so narrow and with such tight corners, so we'll have to return another time for that.

Our final visit for the day was a quick stop in Aramo, which is only 1km from the valley road (I know this as I cycled past it last week). Aramo is once again quiet, sleepy and beautiful. It didn't take long for us to walk around, which was lucky because the smell of someone's BBQ, together with the fact that it was getting on for half past one, meant our tummies were rumbling and it was time to draw a close on our brief morning's indulgence and head home for lunch.

Aramo.

Aramo.

Aramo.

Sorana from Aramo.

We arrived home to the smell of freshly baked bread. I'd finally attempted my first gluten-free loaf in the bread maker. Dave (a.k.a Dave The Chef) had provided us with some powdered xanthum gum quite some time back so that we could try making gluten-free bread (the gum improves the crumb structure). Our previous attempts (without the gum) always ended up producing quite hard and cake-like loaves (in fact, I think it's probably what edible fairy tale houses are made from - although Helen begs to differ, saying that in a fairy tale they would definitely taste nicer than that).

Despite the fact that the machine's mixing paddle seemed incapable of mixing the dough properly, giving the bread an almost artisanal look, it looked pretty good. I wasn't holding out much hope though, and was fully prepared to head out to the local supermarket to buy a loaf - but there was no need! The bread was still a little on the heavy side, but a definite improvement on previous attempts and was judged as passable.

There is some room for improvement, but as we've estimated the cost of making a loaf of our own gluten-free bread to be around €1.50 compared to the over €3 cost of buying one, I think one we'll continue to refine.

Fresh from the 'oven' (bread maker).

After a lunch of cheese, salami, cured ham and bread, we decided to get to the work-half of our day. We both agreed we should probably get the shower room and bedroom in the apartment dressed and photographed, so we spent a couple of hours doing just that, here are the results:

After that, I started work on constructing an 'airlock' to keeps our cats from escaping when they arrive (we'll need to keep them indoors for at least a couple of weeks to make sure they are fully adjusted to their new surroundings before they venture out into their big new playground). We'd bought the materials yesterday and my plan was to make a giant door-sized fly-screen structure, that I could later re-purpose into fly screens for the remaining windows in the house after the cats have had their compulsory period of house arrest.

The hinged fly-screen-door should allow us to leave the door open for fresh air while keeping the cats safely indoors.

While I did this, Helen went upstairs to tackle the second bedroom - and boy did it need some tackling. The second bedroom has become the linen store since all of our stuff arrived: all of our towels, duvets, bed linens, spare pillows and curtains went in there, along with an enormous pile of towels and linens left for us by the previous owners, and the new stuff we bought for when we moved in (which we plan to use for the apartment), so it was piled high with stuff, a lot of which was still in boxes, oh and there was also still a very large double mattress we needed to dispose of.

We bought some of those vacuum storage bags last week to try out - they're the kind of thing I've seen advertised on shopping channels (and in the Lakeland catalogue), which always makes me suspicious, but they are sold everywhere here, so we thought we'd give them a go. Not only would they theoretically save space, but they would also keep out dust/creepy crawlies/damp/mould etc. 

Well, I can reliably inform you they work! I'm not sure what their life span will be, but for now it means we can suck everything down to a size that will fit under the bed. The room is looking much better already, although we need a few more vaccum bags to finish the job.

We used a couple of ratchet straps to roll the mattress up into the smallest size possible, then gaffer-taped it before removing the straps (desperately hoping the gaffer tape would hold and it wouldn't ping open again) and man/woman-handled it downstairs and into the car. Our poor little Citroen deserves some serious TLC soon - it's never worked so hard. Having somehow managed to get the larger-than-normal double sprung mattress into the car, I headed straight for the bins with the car boot open and the end of the rolled up mattress sticking out. Job done! So we are now only a few more vacuum bags and 3-4 bookcases away from having the second bedroom sorted.

We decided that since our furry friends should be with us soon (having been collected from Bristol yesterday, for a short stay in Surrey before crossing the channel and heading into Europe), we ought to aim to get the house as straight as possible before they arrive - we don't want to start banging, drilling and vacuuming while they are trying to settle into their new home. So our focus for the next couple of days is to hang pictures, build bookcases, and organise, organise, organise. We can't wait to see Lucca and Florence, and hope they settle in without too much difficulty. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to Jill and Mike, Helen's parents, for caring for them so attentively since we moved out of Abingdon.

Finally for today, some wildlife photographs to set you up for the week ahead.