Back in early June, we were all set (and more than ready) for a short mini-break - as much as we love our home and our beautiful piece of Tuscany, we felt as if we needed a break from routine and a break from responsibilities and chores. We were devastated therefore when, thanks to a less than helpful garage, we were
unable to go on our holiday because the garage failed to return our car to us in time. However, instead of cancelling our trip outright, the very kind owners of the accommodation we had booked allowed us to re-book our holiday with them for a different set of dates, and this week - four months later than expected - we finally got to have our short break on a quiet farm in the Siena region of southern Tuscany.
Day 1: Road trip
We woke up to a grey Monday morning, and spent a few hours packing and getting ourselves ready for the off. Come 12pm, we were all ready, put a slightly surprised Reggie into his usual sleeping crate, which was now in the boot of the car and set off on our road trip.
Since time was on our side (check in was from 4pm), we decided to take the longer, slower, more scenic
route south and re-live old holiday trips, heading along the same roads we used to
take when travelling down from Pisa to get to our old stomping ground in the Siena region. At first, we
struggled to navigate our way across country, but eventually picked up the
right road and recognised it almost immediately.
It wasn't long though, before
we got stuck behind some slow trucks and the scenery became less familiar -
perhaps it had been the excitement of arriving in different country and heading into
the sunshine that always used to make us look at this road with affection, but today it seemed slow and tedious without much in the way of
attractive scenery! That was until we reached Poggibonsi, at which point we
turned off and were relieved to see much more familiar territory and beautiful
scenery with it. Since we'd been travelling for a couple of hours and had yet
to have any lunch we decided to head into one of our favourite towns for a
break, and were soon pulling into the car parking Colle di Val d'Elsa.
Reggie had spent the journey thus far being incredibly patient sitting in
his crate in the back of the car, but when he sensed that we were pulling into
a car park surrounded by trees, bushes and grass, his whimpering started in
earnest as he sensed the possibility of being allowed out to stretch his legs.
He was so quick to jump out of his crate that we couldn't even get his lead on,
but he simply ran around happily sniffing the bushes and emptying his bladder onto them before coming back to us to be clipped into his lead, after which we all
walked up into the old part of the town, Colle Alto. We walked through the old town to find another
familiar haunt: the bar/restaurant Mille Luci, which we have frequented on many
a happy occasion in the past - the most recent of which being in the days immediately after
our wedding back in 2012.
After asking if it would be OK to bring our "puppy" into the
outdoor seating area, we were shown to a table and sat down. Reggie was very
unsure at first, but soon settled down and was brought a bowl of water by the
friendly waiting staff. The owner came out and was most surprised to find such
a large "puppy". Perhaps at 15 months of age it's time we stopped
referring to him as a puppy...
We had a lovely lunch of seafood salad and chicken salad washed down with
some white wine and followed by a coffee, while Reggie sat quietly under the
table (we won't mention the part where he spotted a cat and nearly brought the
table and chairs crashing down around him as he lunged towards it, not realising
he was tethered to the chair!). By the time we'd finished lunch it was almost 3.30pm and time to head on to
our destination.
Once again we struggled a little with navigating our way to the right road,
but eventually we found ourselves in very familiar territory: the very same
road on which we travelled from Siena to reach San Lorenzo a Linari, the villa
in which we stayed for our wedding week.
From there, we continued further south and the countryside really opened out
into classic rolling Tuscan hills. We noticed how much more agriculture there
is in this part of the region, with lots of freshly ploughed fields with very
red soil and lots of flat arable land - a rarity in our part of Tuscany!
We eventually reached the turn-off for Tocchi, again recognising it, but this time from our
very first holiday in Tuscany way back in the mists of time 12 years ago. After
some way, we found the dirt track described in the directions for reaching the
holidays apartment and made our way to the beautiful
Podere Leccetro agriturismo. We
we greeted by the lovely Giuliana, who showed us our spacious accommodation before leaving us
to bring our bags and Reggie in from the car.
Reggie ran around the house excitedly, running up and down the stairs,
sniffing every corner. It wasn't long before Francesco knocked on the door to
say hello and bring us some wood for the fire. Francesco, who seems a lovely,
gentle man, was barked at for his efforts, but didn't seem to mind. After he
had left we decided to take Reggie for a walk around the grounds of the house
on the lead. Both Guiliana and Francesco had invited us to let Reggie run around the garden, as the entire area is fenced in, but with 12, yes 12, cats in residence, we didn't want to risk it!
The grounds of the property are beautiful - very pretty and immaculately kept. The owners, Guiliana and Francesco, specialise in bee keeping (Francesco has 300 hives!) and restoring furniture. Guiliana told us that Francesco had been here for 30 years, since leaving agricultural college, and she moved here later, after retiring from her job in Florence. Stuart asked me whether walking around the beautiful gardens made me want to go home and tidy up our own offerings - when I immediately said "yes", he pointed out that that must make this a truly inspirational place!
After a thorough inspection of the grounds we retired indoors to
light the fire - our first fire of the season (and burning someone else's wood to boot) - and settle down for an evening of relaxing.
Day 2: Familiar ground and rain.
After a relaxing evening with a bottle of wine, a simple meal of cured meats
and cheeses, classical music on the CD player and a fire burning in the hearth,
we retired to bed for a good night's sleep. Or so we thought.
Just as we were drifting off to sleep something must have startled Reggie in his unfamiliar surroundings and
he let out a short but loud volley of barks from his crate downstairs. The house here is
so quiet and echoey that his barks startled us back into full consciousness. Reggie was quickly and easily reassured and he settled back down to sleep straight away - we didn't
hear another peep from him all night. Unfortunately, it seemed that Reggie was the
only one who found it easy to get back to sleep! Stuart and I both struggled
with overheating under the enormous quilt, I battled a headache that I'd been
suffering with since early Monday morning, and we both had a restless night.
When daylight finally dawned, Reggie couldn't believe his luck when he was
let out of his crate and allowed to bound upstairs and to jump onto the bed with
us - he has never been allowed upstairs at home, as upstairs is cats-only territory. It must have seemed like Christmas to him! We eventually decided it was
time to face the day and after letting Reggie into the garden to relieve
himself (supervised on the leash of course, in case of meeting any cats), we got into the car to drive to San Rocco a Pilli.
As had been forecast, the weather was pretty bad - strong winds and heavy rain
greeted us, but at least we had been expecting it. We parked the car in a side
street in San Rocco a Pilli before making a dash through the rain to the main street and into a
café for a cappuccino and croissant each as breakfast. We then made our way to the Coop to do some shopping. We know San Rocco a
Pilli fairly well, and in particular the Coop, as this is the small town just
around the corner from the San Lorenzo a Linari villa where we and our friends
and family stayed for our wedding in 2012. It was strange to be in the town
again - everything looked exactly the same, but we felt as if we were viewing it though
new eyes now that we have spent more than a year living in Italy. The small
bars and cafés that looked slightly intimidating to us back then now look quite
normal and inviting to us, and while we thought of it as a quite unremarkable
town back then, we now see it as a nice little place with good amenities.
Shopping done, it was straight back to the house, where we left the shopping
in the car, pulled on wellie boots and waterproofs and got Reggie out of the car to
finally stretch his legs. We walked from the property along the long driveway
to the road and then into the tiny village of Tocchi. From there we followed
the signs for Castello di Tocchi, an even smaller settlement about 1.5km from
the village. The roads were quiet, so we allowed Reggie to run about - that was
until we heard voices around the corner, at which point we thankfully called him
to us to clip him into the leash: around the corner came 8 riders on horseback. I hate to think of what might have happened if Reggie had come across horse riders while running free! As it was, he seemed a little perplexed and sat quietly, while firmly held on the leash, to watch them go around the corner and off up another track. After that we decided to keep him on the leash for the rest of the walk.
Castello di Tocchi proved to be a beautiful arrangement of dwellings around
a courtyard - and with the exception of one very well kept house it appeared to
be entirely unoccupied.
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| Stuart and Reggie walk past the old communal bread oven in Castello di Tocchi. |
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| It took us a moment to realise that the bark of this tree has been stripped for cork. |
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| Porcini? |
Having nosed around the pretty settlement we trudged our way back to the house - by his point the weather was warm enough for us to
need to take our coats off and to wish we didn't have wellie boots super-heating our feet,
but the wind was still strong and the skies grey and foreboding.
By the time we got back to the house and unpacked the shopping from the car
it was lunchtime, so we sat down to a lunch of bread, cheese and dips. We had planned to spend a quiet afternoon reading books, listening to music
etc., but in the end we spent an even quieter afternoon catching up on a little
of the sleep we missed out on last night! We took Reggie up to the bedroom and
shut him in with us in the hopes that he would be quieter and less distracted
than if he were left to roam the house and spot cats from the windows - and he too
settled down for a mid-afternoon snooze with us after his exciting morning.
After our power nap we did some of the reading etc. that we'd planned to do,
before turning our attention to cooking some dinner: a ribollita (Italian stew
of cavolo nero, potatoes, carrots and other veg) for tomorrow, and a polenta dish with mushrooms
for this evening - both from the same Esselunga magazine as brought us Louise's
chestnut cheesecake last week, so if they turn out to be half as good as her creation we
will be pleased!
Day 3: Wet, wet, wet
After a somewhat improved but still not very restful night's sleep, we awoke to
another grey day. By the time we'd eaten breakfast the rain had started, but
with the weather not predicted to improve, we decided to head out regardless.
This morning we headed for the nearest sizeable town to us in the other
direction, Monticiano. This little town also had significance for us as it was
the first place we stayed on our first ever holiday to Italy! Today, the town
was wet and grey, and I wondered if we would even be here in Italy if the
weather had been like this for our first taste of Tuscany all those years ago! Of
course, back then we were visiting in August and the weather was hot and sunny and
showcased the stunning landscape in is best light. Today, there was not much landscape
visible at all through the clouds and raindrops, and at one point we even felt as if we could have been in Oxfordshire on a damp day. We made our way through the town with Reggie in tow to
try and find a footpath to the San Galgano Abbey, which we had seen signposted.
The path soon veered away from civilisation and into the countryside, at which
point we were able to let Reggie off the lead and he ran about joyfully careering
through the puddles having a wail of a time. The persistent rain, which by now
had become heavier, didn't seem to bother him at all - in fact, I'm pretty sure
that he has been the one to have got the most out of this mini-break.
After walking for quite a while, we sensed that we might have missed the
turning for the abbey, which was only meant to have been 2km from the town. We were
somewhat baffled by a 'helpful' signpost on the path showing a map of footpaths, but failing to show whereabouts on the map we were (there was a 'you
at here' marked on the key to the map, yet no marker on the map itself!). Feeling very soggy, we
decided to do an about turn and make our way slowly and soggily back to the car.
We drove straight back to the house where we towelled Reggie down, peeled off our sodden garments and
changed into dry clothes before sitting down to lunch followed by an afternoon
of reading and relaxing by the fire.
The evening was spent in much the same way - we ate the ribollita that we'd made last night - which was delicious - read books and retired to bed early for a final attempt at a good night's sleep.
Day 4: Good to be home
Once again, it wasn't a good night's sleep - for me, the headache that I'd been battling with on and off all week kept me awake, while Stuart found his back aching, what a couple of old crocks!
I got up early to start gathering our belongings together and trying to tidy the place up a bit, and by 9.30am we were all ready to load the car, say farewell to the lovely kind owners of the property, and head off homeward bound.
Our first stop, was to be for a coffee and breakfast in San Rocco a Pilli. However, our actual first stop was to be pulled over on the outskirts of San Rocco a Pilli by the Carabinieri! This was our first experience of being pulled over for a check of documents - we know that it happens regularly in Italy, but this was the first time we'd come across it. Thankfully, we are now all fully legal on the car front, and after a quick chat with the friendly police officer - who spoke a little English to us, and who seemed very happy indeed with our documents - we were on our way.
Once again, we parked in the side street and dashed to the patisserie/café for coffee and pastries, before getting back to the car and finally setting off for home. Having learned from the journey here that the 'scenic' route was slow and tedious, we decided to use the autostrada all the way. Not only did it make for much quicker driving, but it afforded us our first view of Siena since 2012 as well!
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| Siena through the rain drops. |
With the exception of a little incident where we missed the turn-off to the A11 motorway and accidentally started heading for Bologna, the return journey was much more straightforward and faster, and by 1pm we were coming into Pescia. By all accounts the weather here has been even worse than it was in the south of the region, with tales of flash flooding and power cuts. The river was in full force as we drove through town, and when we reached home we were amazed to find Stuart's industrial scale buckets full to the brim with rainwater.
On finally reaching home, we felt a sense of relief and well-being. It has been a tiring week - in different weather and under different circumstances (perhaps migraine-free?), I think it would have been a whole lot more relaxing, and I really can't overstate how lovely Podere Leccetro was, how much we warmed to its kind and gentle owners, and how much inspiration we took from the place. On getting back to our humble abode, the first thing we noticed was how messy our garden looks in comparison to the beautiful grounds of where we had home from! Nevertheless, it feels good to be home, and it feels good to know that being happy to be home must mean that we are in the right place.
