Saturday started promptly as Angelo had called on Friday night asking if, the following morning, he could collect the roofing blow torch he had lent me - he said he would be passing by at 8am. True to his word, Angelo arrived at 8am and he and I had a chat for about half an hour not only about my progress on the shed but also about olive picking, pruning and internet providers before he finally headed for work.
Having been reluctant to be caught by Angelo arriving in the middle of her exercise routine, Helen had given it a miss for the day, so instead as soon as Angelo had left we headed straight out to walk Reggie.
After a stop at what is now our regular haunt of Nerone's café bar to imbibe a frothy cappuccino and a sweet pastry each (breakfast), we headed into town and beyond to the 'chicken run' walk, knowing that town was bound to be busy already as it was market day.
We had a nice quiet walk along the river and Reggie, having missed out on his walk on Friday due to the lack of car, seemed to fully run off all his pent up energy. Indeed, at one point he came charging up behind us at full speed and, running between us, delivered a glancing blow to Helen's calf, resulting in her emitting a rather loud expletive - indeed, by this evening there was a decent sized bruise from the impact!
By the time we'd got back from our walk it was mid morning and we were both keen to make a start on continuing to clear the section of terracing to the left of the chicken enclosure in which Helen had spent Friday afternoon cutting the bramble.
In order to make the best use of our time, we decided not to delay the shopping until the usual lunchtime slot and instead to brave the throngs in Pescia. We were lucky to find a spot in the Lidl car park, which was rammed. The car park here is often busier than normal on a Saturday morning with cheeky folk using it as free parking before taking the short walk across the foot bridge to the market in the piazza, it was double trouble today however, as the sizeable free car park adjacent to Lidl is out of action for at least the next few weeks due to having become the home of a temporary fair ground!
Inside the shop, it was surprisingly quiet for the time of day (proof of just how few of the cars parked in the car park were actual customers of the shop!), which meant that when we bumped into David and Sarah, who were also doing an unusual Saturday shop, we could happily block an isle for a while while we chatted.
After following David and Sarah on to Esselunga to do the bulk of our shopping, we escaped the busy checkouts and headed home for lunch.
We had planned on using some of our fresh eggs to have scrambled eggs for lunch, but as the day was wearing on and the pastries we'd eaten for breakfast seemed like a distant memory (certainly if our rumbling stomachs were anything to go by), we abandoned the idea in favour of a quick tuna sandwich so that we could get food inside us and get outside to work without delay.
We spent the rest of the daylight hours cutting down trees in the aforementioned area of terracing and throwing them down onto the driveway so that, towards the end of the day, we could 'process' them - stripping the small branches off for kindling and piling up the trunks ready for cutting into smaller pieces with the chainsaw at a later date.
As darkness fell, we locked the chickens in for the night and headed indoors to light a fire and switch on the fairy lights before cooking dinner - but not before we roasted a tray of sweet chestnuts which we ate and washed down with a beer.
After dinner we decided we would dust off one of our Christmas films, the first one of the season. We decided to see which, if any, had been dubbed into Italian, thinking we could mix fun with an opportunity to educate ourselves a little too.
From our respectably sized collection it was VERY slim pickings, we had The Santa Clause, a collection of Simpsons Christmas specials and Scrooged, the Bill Murray classic (and one of my all time favourites). Helen quickly ruled out anything Simpsons-related and we settled on The Santa Clause.
We made it half way through the movie before tiredness got the better of us and we headed to bed at gone 11pm (that's late for us farmer folk).
Sunday is an exercise-free day - the one day Helen gives herself off her early morning routine - and therefore the only chance of a lie-in, although that's completely dependent on the animals. During the night, Lucca went through his usual routine, with Helen getting up to feed him at some point in the early hours before coming back to bed, and it was quite a while before he then asked to go out. When I say he 'asked', what I mean is that he noisily scratched the bedroom door for a while. However, on this occasion we won out in the battle of the wills and Lucca gave up before one of us gave in and so we slept through until just after 8am, when I got up to deal with the animals and left Helen in bed.
Helen managed to sleep for almost another hour, which she seemed to be thankful for, and after breakfast we headed out again with Reggie, first to Nerone (of course) for another pre-walk coffee.
Once the coffees had been dispatched, we headed up the Forfora valley towards Sorana, planning to do one of our regular walks from the back of Sorana into the woods. Along the way, however, we drove past an old abandoned mill which marks the start of a footpath towards Aramo and San Quirico. Feeling uncharacteristically spontaneous, we pulled over and decided to give it a try, having said for maybe the last 12 months 'we must try that walk'. It was good to finally have a go at it, although we had no idea how much time off the lead Reggie would get, we could only hope.
We walked between the mill buildings and took the very old stone path up the hill - and boy, did it go up the hill, it zig-zagged almost without let up for a kilometre, eventually passing by a couple of inhabited houses (how they got their cars there I'm not sure, but it certainly wasn't along the very old stone pathway we were now using!).
With the exception of the little stretch past the houses Reggie was off-leash the whole way, which meant he could get a good stretch of the legs.
We eventually hit a road of sorts so had to now leash him while we worked out, with the help of the GPS and its Italian maps, where we were. We knew that if we crossed the road and carried on up the stone path we'd soon be in San Quirico, but having climbed up for nearly an hour already, we decided this was a good point to turn back.
The views from up here were beautiful, and not ones we were used to really, we could see the western side of Sorana in the middle of the valley -which is terraced to a much greater extent than the other hillsides around here (and is probably largely covered in their famous beans through the summer).
When we initially pulled over to try this track, we imagined we would be walking to Aramo, not San Quirico, but we didn't see a single sign or opportunity to turn left in the direction of Aramo. It didn't matter, we had enjoyed a great walk with views to match, but we decided to try and look for the path branching towards Aramo on our descent so that we could try it on another occasion. With the help of the GPS we located the turning off point just by the mill close to the road. It was no surprise we'd missed it - there was no signpost and there was a small stream cutting across the path. It looked like until some years back there had been footbridge for crossing the stream, but, rather like the abandoned mill, the bridge was now half gone - it seemed to be constructed of two parallel RSJ beams with planks slotted in next to each other to create the footway, but half of the wood had long since rotted (or been taken). The stream looked passable with the right footwear though - something to bear in mind when we do try the path!
After loading Reggie into the car we headed to Amanda's to go and buy some lunch, pick up Helen's homework and drop off some of our eggs for Amanda, Samantha and their parents to try. After handing over the eggs and a quick chat, we left the shop with Helen's homework and with lunch in the form of scallopine of pork in mushroom sauce, a cold chicken salad and some roasted potatoes.
Lunch was delicious, as expected, and after polishing off our plates we left Reggie indoors with a ham bone and headed back to the terraces to start raking and burning - clearing up some of the mess we'd made yesterday! We spent the rest of the afternoon, raking, burning, cutting, clearing and enjoying the rare (of late) opportunity to work together.
As the daylight faded we called time on work after letting the fire die down and freeing a long-neglected olive tree from amongst the bramble before collecting firewood and heading indoors for showers and dinner.
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| Before. |
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| End of play Saturday. |
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| End of play Sunday. |
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