Today's destination
was the tiny village of Limano in northern Tuscany. We got away okay
in the morning, but just past Florence, I was trying to do some maths
with Zoe and didn't notice that Sally's touchscreen had bumped
against me and we missed a vital turn-off. It was about 15 kilometres
until the next exit, but just as we were nearing it, we bumped up
against a traffic jam. We sat for ages, watching with bemusement as
the crazy Italian drivers pulled out onto the hard shoulder, drove a
bit further on then tried, unsuccessfully, to push back into the
queue, thus making it impossible for the emergency vehicles to reach
the incident ahead that was causing the jam.
We eventually
started moving again, rolling past a pretty nasty accident – a
three-lorry pile-up - one of them with a rather mangled cab. It had
obviously happened not too long before we got there, as we were only
a few hundred metres from it. Once we had rolled past, we pulled off
the motorway, paid the toll, went around a roundabout and got back
onto the motorway, heading back the way we had come, past kilometres
and kilometres of stopped lorries – the tailback from the accident
(lorries have to drive in the outside lane, so they were forced to
endure the wait while things returned to normal).
By around lunchtime,
we were approaching the town of Pistoia, so we decided to pop in for
lunch. However, the lack of parking, horrendous traffic and general
feel of the place combined to convince us to loop back out of town
and stop at the local McDonald's (where parking was also in very
short supply). As we left, we spotted a big supermarket, so stopped
there for some supplies. Driving into and out of the town, we were
struck by the number of plant nurseries that are spread out on the
land around – row after row of trees and shrubs, many of them
planted directly into the ground rather than in pots.
As we left Pistoia,
which is on a broad, flat plain, the road began to rise and the
scenery got more interesting. Eventually, we found ourselves driving
alongside a small river with steep hills rising up on either side of
us. The sign to Limano pointed us up one of these hills, and we drove
back and forth across the hillside, successive switchbacks taking us
higher and higher until we reached the village.
After parking
outside the village (yep, yet another long walk for yours truly while
ferrying stuff from the car to the house), we walked to the house
next door to the one we had rented – both houses are owned by Brits
Nick and Jackie, who showed us around and introduced us to Zorro,
their very friendly black Labrador.
Then, ferrying
finished, I ran back down to the car with my camera beneath a sky
stained blood-red by the setting sun.
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