The arrival of winter!

Winter finally seems to have put in an appearance on our hillside this weekend - although whether it is here to stay remains to be seen.

Saturday - forced indoors by the weather.

We both woke early on Saturday after a fitful night's sleep disturbed by the sound of rain and high winds. We'd both lain awake during the night wondering what damage the wind was doing outside, and what devastation we would be greeted by in the morning. Since the rain had temporarily abated when we woke up, I suggested we get up there and then and go and give Reggie a walk as I was sure the rain would be coming back before long and we wouldn't feel like going out later.

And so it was that we were pulling on wellies and leaving the house before 8am on Saturday! We found a lot of bits and pieces from the back of the house had been blown around, but there was no damage as such - thankfully Stuart's brand new shed doors were still on their hinges, and the wood pile was still covered by the banner material he'd bought and set up a couple of weeks ago. It was still wet and windy as we left the house, but as we got further along the road it dried up and by the time we reached Pescia the rain had stopped and it was remarkably still.

We walked Reggie along the river - at that time of the morning it was pretty quiet, and we encountered only two groups of people with their respective dogs. On completing the walk, we headed back up the murky cloud-covered hill for a well deserved breakfast: a cappuccino and a pastry at Nerone's in Pietrabuona.

By the time we got home, the rain had started up again, so we felt pleased with ourselves for having got the dog walk under our belts so early in the day.

We got the cats in out of the rain (although both had been sheltering in the new shed - Lucca choosing to sit in a pile of freshly made sawdust underneath Stuart's workbench, so he came in adorned with bits of sawdust), and went to check for eggs. Chickens usually lay in the early morning, but our only (so far) layer - who has given us an egg every day since Wednesday - hasn't usually produced the goods until around 8.30-9am, so when we first go up to let them out in the morning there isn't any egg yet. Today, when Stuart went up, he found not just the usual one white egg in one of the nesting boxes, but also a brown egg in the sawdust on the floor! Clearly one of the red chickens has joined the party on the egg-laying front, and for the first time we had not one but two eggs in our day's collection.

We spent the morning listening to the rain and wind whipping around outside and doing admin tasks on our computers - it was the first time in a very long time that the weather had forced us indoors for the day.

We did venture out once again though - after lunch, we went to Montecatini to visit the pet shop to buy Reggie a bumper pack of chews, popped into Obi to buy some bolts for the shed doors, then  into Euronics to buy a Google Chromecast device to enable us to watch TV via the internet without having to have the laptop constantly plugged into the TV. This hadn't been a problem at all until Stuart built a neat little shelf for the laptop a few weeks ago - the shelf got the laptop and its cables out of the way, tidying up the living room nicely, and we controlled the laptop from a separate keyboard in the living room. The difficulties started when Florence discovered the shelf and the fact that not only does the laptop act as a nice little cat-sized electric blanket safely out of the way of barky dogs, but the shelf itself also benefits from the heat rising from the fire - a truly cosy little spot, perfect for a little tabby cat to spend her evenings. This wouldn't have been a problem but for the fact that Florence soon started taking control of the laptop - typing nonsense into the search bar, sitting on the space bar when we were trying to log in, turning the entire screen upside down, playing with the volume control when were trying to watch things, and even attempting to buy things (the final straw was when she somehow managed to bring up a page on which she was about to buy a One Direction album - at which point we decided enough was enough!). The Chromecast device allows us to control the TV without needing the laptop to be plugged into it - which effectively means it no longer needs to sit on its shelf, so we can have it safely down in the living room with us, and Florence can have the whole shelf to herself, albeit without the electric blanket she was enjoying.

When we got back from our shopping trip we spent the rest of the afternoon doing more admin jobs in the dry indoors (yes, I am delighted to say that we started out Christmas shopping!!), after which we roasted some chestnuts in the oven (not our own chestnuts, I'm afraid, but local Tuscan ones bought from the supermarket) and enjoyed them with a glass of wine in front of the fire. We will definitely be collecting and roasting our own chestnuts next year, as this is such a lovely way to eat them.

As we listened to the rain beating down both on the skylight at the top of the stairs and on the newly erected canopy above our front door - and even heard a rumble or two of thunder in the distance - we struggled to imagine that the next day would be bright and clear. Not only that, but there had been several rumours around the valley that Sunday would bring the first snow of the winter to the valley - well, with the rain pelting down, we discounted those rumours once and for all!

Sunday - the arrival of winter.

We had an altogether more restful night's sleep on Saturday night, and were quite shocked to find it was almost 9am when we finally woke up - it's been a while since we slept in for that long! The weather appeared to have done a complete 360 degree about turn overnight, and we awoke to clear skies, sunshine and distinctly chilly air. Keen not to waste any more of the day, we quickly dispatched breakfast before heading out with Reggie.

We were halfway along the drive when we caught a glimpse through the trees of the view up the valley above us - could that be a dusting of snow on the hills? When we got to the end of the drive we confirmed that, yes, there was snow on the hills up the valley! The very same hills that Mum and Dad had climbed just a few weeks ago were now covered in the cold stuff. It felt as if someone had simply flipped a switch during the night from 'autumn' to 'winter'.

Our first stop was a quick pit stop at Nerone's café in the village for a cappuccino to set us up for the day. While there, we browsed through the local newspaper - something we usually do, with varying degrees of success in understanding the stories. The front page of today's edition was all about the arrival of snow and the consequent plans to open up the services at the Abetone ski resort next week. Abetone (which is about 50km north of us) had a dumping of 10cm of snow yesterday afternoon (while we were being deluged with rain), and more overnight, which sets the resort up nicely for the start of the season, with the snow cannons ready to step in and add more to what nature has provided if necessary. Anyway, not only were we interested to find out about Abetone's ski season, but we were pretty chuffed with ourselves that we had managed to read most of a newspaper article and understand it!

Coffees dispatched, we returned to Reggie, who was waiting patiently in the car, and headed back up the hill, passing our gate and carrying on up to Vellano where we were meeting David. We found David waiting for us by the side of the road in the village, so he hopped into the car and took us once again to the start of the 'Obaca' walk - we planned to do the walk that Stuart and David had failed to do during the week due to having come across an ongoing hunt. This time, the track was deserted so the three of us and Reggie all headed off into the crisp morning air.

The distant hills of Abetone covered in snow.

The walk was lovely - it was a beautiful morning for a walk in the cold winter sunshine, and the path took us through part of the local landscape that has been completely unknown to us until now. We had heard about 'Obaca' being a flat piece of land with large open spaces in which a lot of fruit used to be grown, but we simply couldn't picture it, despite vaguely knowing its whereabouts. Once we'd passed the flat piece of ground, which was as lovely as we had been led to believe, we headed up into the trees and Reggie tore around, disappearing up through the trees only to reappear minutes later further along the track from us, his return heralded by the sound of paws crashing through the leaves.

The path eventually joined up with the cava track that we often use, so we picked up that track, walked back to the road and then completed the loop back to the car. Feeling as if we'd all had a good amount of fresh air and exercise, we decided we'd stop for another coffee before going our separate ways, this time at the Bistrot in Vellano. When we arrived, we found Donatella there, just about to leave after having been dropped there by her Mum earlier. Donatella stopped to have a quick fuss with Reggie before her Mum appeared with the car to take her home, leaving Stuart, David and me to sit and have a coffee on the terrace at the Bistrot. One thing was sure, it really felt like winter this morning - even in the warmth of the sun, the air felt cold on our faces and there was a distinctly wintry smell of wood smoke in the air.

When we finished our coffees, we bade farewell to David, thanking him for being our guide on what may well now be our new favourite walk, and headed back down the hill. We had one more stop to make before heading home, which was for what is rapidly becoming our weekly habit of buying Sunday lunch from Amanda's shop - and collecting the homework that Samantha has set for me. Today, we chose seafood skewers (prawns, squid and octopus), roast potatoes and peas cooked with pancetta.

We headed straight home from there to heat our goodies up in the oven and enjoy a delicious lunch before turning our attentions to our afternoon's work.

Now that the weather has taken a turn for the chilly side, and with temperatures forecast to dip close to freezing (at night) during the coming week, we have been forced to move one job that we've been putting off since early June to the top of our priority list. You may remember that, back in June, we had a nightmare 21 hours with no water in the house at all - and in trying to remedy the situation, we were forced to dig up our entire water pipe (which comes all the way from the bottom of the hill up the terraces to the house). Of course, as soon as water started flowing again, we breathed an enormous sigh of relief and moved on to the next job on our list, saying that we must remember to re-cover the pipe at some point before winter. Well, of course, job after job has taken priority since then, and we now find ourselves on the brink of winter and in the rather vulnerable position of having our mains water pipe over ground!

Not wanting to get caught out with frozen pipes, we therefore dedicated this afternoon to covering the water pipe. We started by digging a small channel for the pipe, and then laid stones over it, covering the pipe with stones both (hopefully) to keep it frost-free and to clearly mark the line of the pipe so that, should we ever have any more problems with it, it will be very easy to find and check - we decided we quite liked the overall effect, creating an interesting 'feature' on the landscape of the terraces as well.

Having spent many a frustrating day over the past year of so cursing the stony nature of our ground when attempting to dig in fence posts and the like, today that very characteristic came as a blessing - just when we thought we were going to run out of stones to cover the pipe we'd spot another little pile of stones sticking out from the ground and with only the slightest amount of digging at the soil we'd find even more.

In the end, we got about halfway down the pipe before deciding to call it a day for now - Stuart wanted to spend some time on the shed, fitting some bolts to stop the doors flailing around in the wind, so we climbed back up to the house and while Stuart worked on the shed I carried on splitting some chestnut logs from the tree that Stuart had felled last week.

By the time I'd finished splitting the logs the light was beginning to fade, even though we'd had more daylight today than we've had recently, with few clouds to darken the sky prematurely. With the temperature dropping quickly though, it was soon time for Stuart to come indoors as well and for us to light a fire, put some chestnuts in the oven to roast and to spend another evening by the fire with a glass of wine and a bowl of piping hot chestnuts.