Mini explorations and excavations

It was another slow day for us today - we're making a conscious effort to make the most of the winter break to recharge our batteries. Nevertheless, we were both up early to see to the animals, after which I went to collect more firewood from the wood pile so that we could get the fire going nice and early. The snow/hail/rain had frozen overnight, making the garden steps and path as far as the wood plie quite treacherous, but as the sun came out during the day it all thawed through fairly quickly.

After a morning of reading books, sitting by the fire and occasionally taking Reggie into the garden, we headed out for a mini exploration. We took Reggie on his lead and first headed up the drive to climb up the old donkey track with GPS (to mark our coordinates), mapped outline of our land and camera phone in hand. When we reached the top of the donkey track, where there is an electricity pilon, I had to do a double take. When I had scrambled up the track with Mum, just two months ago, we could barely see the base of the pilon and we'd had to pick our way slowly and carefully through thick swathes of prickly acacia. However, now that the acacia has dropped its leaves things look very different and you could almost call the area a small clearing.

Reggie would have been lost in amongst acacias a couple of months ago!

All the way up the donkey track we came across large areas of churned up earth - which we could only assume were the excavations of families of wild boar. In places it looked like a herd of wild elephants had passed through, never mind wild boar.

Churned up earth.

Elephant excavations?

After our trek to the top of the donkey track, we turned back towards the house, and carried on beyond it, onto the path that heads off into the woods in the other direction. We carefully picked our way along the path that becomes quite precipitous in places (which was somewhat alarming when trying to hold an excitable puppy on a lead in one hand) towards the remains of the old quarry - a fascinating collection of old walls and stones. We've no idea what sort of structure the walls formed, but they are extensive, very well defined and well made. We also caught glimpses down to the stream/river in the bottom of the gulley - the Rio dell'Asino, which marks the border of our land.

The river in the gulley.

Within the walls of the old quarry/building.

After that, we headed back to the house to tend to the fire. The day was bright and sunny, and while we were out tramping about in the afternoon's sunshine we'd got quite warm, but we knew that temperatures would plummet again as soon as the sun dipped behind the hill so it was important to keep the fire going.

We spent the rest of the afternoon much as we'd spent the morning - relaxing by the fire with books, a bit of tv... oh and a snifter of our own home-made chestnut rum. If that didn't warm the cockles of our hearts nothing would!!!

The chestnut rum tasted a lot better than it looks!

Knowing that we had to meet Andrea, the geometra, at 10am in the morning - and that we would have to fit in a trip to the bank before that, we retired to bed for a relatively early night.