Sightseeing aplenty!

The plan for this morning had been to pick up the number crunching so that Helen could get an invoice sent in pronto - financially speaking, it's been all one-way traffic since we arrived. 

After a relatively early night, and with the exception of the obligatory early morning wake-up toe attack from Lucca, we both slept solidly and at length, it was a cool evening and with crisp, fresh bed linen it made for a lovely 10-hour sleep - something of a rarity, not to mention a luxury, but we definitely needed it.

This meant that breakfast was a slow, leisurely affair sitting on the patio in the morning sunshine while we poured over maps and guide books deciding what to do with our afternoon off. Yes, we had decided to finish our weekend with a mini-holiday!

Coffee, juice and cereal dispatched, we decided on a trip to the Padule di Fucecchio - a flat marshland not far from here which is now an important wildlife reserve. We have recently learned we are obliged to pay towards the upkeep of the Padule by way of a twice-a-year bill, albeit a very small one, amounting to roughly €25 a year. From what we can gather, anyone living near to the water that feeds the wetlands is obliged to pay this bill which goes towards the upkeep of the waterways - from what we've been told they do actually spend the money on making repairs to said waterways, and indeed there is a notice just next to the river Torbola in Pietrabuona about recent works completed by the Padule organisation. We've also heard guys with chainsaws cutting along the river which forms the border of our property, presumably to keep the river clear, so this is all good news.

Anyway, by the time breakfast was finished it was around 11am and, excited by the prospect of a trip out, we parked the idea of paperwork until later and went to the car, hoping it would start - we haven't used the car for several days, so today was going to be a real test. Thankfully, it sprung into life without issue - so we can fairly safely conclude that the old battery had simply come to the end of its life after all.

We knew roughly where the Padule were, and according to a local guide book, Anchione was the village to head for. The Padule's own website was less than helpful - they certainly don't seem to spend the money from our tax here!

When we arrived in the area we saw a brown sign for the Padule di Fucecchio, which we duly followed, and then it went pear shaped - no more signs, for anything. Anchione is a dead-end village with every road we took ending up in a no through road. We were stumped, we couldn't see very far across what were obviously very flat lands as maize was growing all around, but the beautiful tree-lined canals we saw in the pictures in the guide book were nowhere to be seen.

We headed back towards the brown sign to make sure we hadn't missed anything along the way, but still no joy. Another case of being beaten by Italian signage (or lack thereof)! We pulled in at a car park next to what we knew to be the Pescia river, which feeds the Padule. Sure enough, there was a Padule sign with a map showing various routes along the river and around the area, so we locked the car and set off on a rather unpromising looking track next to the river. I think we made it at least 100 yards before we stopped and realised that not only would it be a long walk to reach the more interesting nature reserve section, but that we weren't dressed appropriately for that kind of jaunt. So it was back in the car feeling somewhat downtrodden - our half-day holiday wasn't meant to feel like this!

We decided instead to return to Montecatini Alto and have a good look around the back streets - we weren't far away, so it made sense. 

We managed to navigate our way through Montecatini Terme and pick up the road to Montecatini Alto, where we parked up and walked along the perimeter road which affords amazing views (yes more!). Then we turned up the steep path to head to the now familiar central piazza lined with restaurant tables and chairs. By this time it was nearly 1pm, so we decided to stop and have a little lunch (admittedly it had only been a couple of hours since breakfast, but if we didn't eat now we would soon be hungry and grumpy, which would curtail the rest of the afternoon's sightseeing, so you see, lunch was necessary!).

We picked a restaurant with plenty of shaded tables and ordered a carafe of wine, a litre of water and Helen ordered polenta with mushrooms while I had ribollita, a tuscan soup made with bread and vegetables that I'd been looking forward to trying. Neither seemed a particularly appropriate choice considering the intense heat of the day, but they were very tasty - the polenta was good comfort food, and the soup was suitably filling and very tasty.

We had a good walk around the deserted back streets afterwards and then had ice cream in the square before heading for the car.

We were halfway home before we decided we could fit a little more sightseeing into the afternoon, so we doubled back a little way to visit Colle di Buggiano. We visited Castello di Buggiano last week, thinking it was Colle di Buggiano, but never quite made it as far as Colle (which is the next village on), so it was an easy detour to see another one of the villages on our 'places to visit' list.

Along the way we'd seen a few people standing at roundabouts and road junctions wearing high-viz vests looking suspiciously like they were marshals waiting for some form of race to pass their way. On arrival in Colle di Buggiano it seemed that there was indeed some sort of cycle race somewhere nearby - as was confirmed by the presence of a couple of members of the equivalent of the St John Ambulance who were also standing around waiting for some form of action to appear. None the wiser, we parked the car and walked up into and around the village - a beautiful place and with a feeling of being fairly well 'lived in'. There was a restaurant in the square, and the circolo (which is kind of social club) was open, with people sitting outside.

After a pleasant half hour or so we got back into the car and, after looking at the map, decided to continue along the same road in order to climb over the ridge to Vellano and then drop back down the valley towards home. We hadn't used this route before and so thought it looked interesting. It wasn't long after we'd left the village when a motorcyclist coming the opposite way whizzed past and shouted something at us. He was wearing high-viz too, and had a radio aerial on the back of his bike and signage in various places. A little bemused, we slowed down - we suspected he was something to do with the cycle race, but since the road was not closed, and there weren't even any 'beware cycle race' signs in evidence (yes, fooled twice in one day by lack of signage), we continued slowly. It was only a matter of seconds before another motorcyclist appeared, also shouting and gesticulating at us. We stopped, and this time so did he, and all we could grasp was 'ON THE LEFT, QUICKLY!!' So I pulled the car over into a layby, at which point he yelled 'PERFECT' and whizzed off on his way. All we could assume was that the bikes were clearing the road ahead of the cyclists coming through, so we got out of the car to wait. A few minutes later we were passed by a stream of team vehicles, ambulances, and then bunches of cyclists, It was a little like being a spectator at the Tour de France or the Giro, except that the total number of spectators numbered two (us). 

I started to get into it and was clapping the cyclists as they appeared, it was just as Helen as telling me my clapping could be taken to sound a little sarcastic that we heard a commotion and turned to see a cyclist taking a corner too wide and hitting the roadside barrier.

What drama! We didn't quite know what to do or where to look - it was only 10 metres away, we were the only spectators there, and he was clearly in a lot of pain and bleeding badly from his hand. Thankfully, hot on his heels were another motorbike marshal, a team car and an ambulance, all of which stopped to check on the poor guy. The motorcycle man did quite a lot of shouting to the guys in the ambulance, clearly keen to get everyone on their way again, and a matter of minutes later some form of splint had been fixed to the cyclist's hand and in a flash all the vehicles disappeared, leaving the poor guy with his team mate and a somewhat misshapen bike. A few minutes later the pair did an about turn and slowly rode off in the direction from whence they came. We waited a little while longer - unsure as to how we would know when it was safe to get back on the road, but once we saw a fairly steady stream of non-race-looking cars driving past us, we decided it was safe to continue.

We headed up the hill towards Vellano, but made a quick stop at Cozzile along the way - a tiny, but beautiful little village, striking for its lack of render on the building, making it quite unusual for the region.

We finally wound our war back down the other side of the mountain into our valley and, deciding we'd seen enough for the day, went home to soak up the last couple of hours of sunshine on our patio.