It was nice,
sunny in the morning, so after I had spent another session shooting the views around the village, we decided to go for a walk in the forest up the hill behind. As we were heading out, we bumped into Nick, who
offered to come with us to show us his and Jackie's favourite walk –
which would also give him an opportunity to walk Zorro.
The trail wound past
lots of little stone-walled terraces – Nick explained that life
here had been extremely hard for Limano's early inhabitants and they
had built these terraces to grow whatever crops they could. However,
a large part of their sustenance had come from chestnuts, which they
collected in the autumn, dried and ground to make flour. (Whenever we
stopped for one of Nick's impromptu history/natural history lessons,
Zorro would wander back and bark several times to let us know that it
was time to move on.) We eventually reached a large cross on the side
of the hill, where we stopped for a breather, before heading down a
steep ridge and out onto a spur, from which we had some superb views
over the surrounding hills, mountains and valleys.
In the evening, we
discussed our options for visiting Florence. We hadn't really planned
to go there, but it seemed a shame to be this close and not see it,
so we needed to figure out the best way to get there. Kate was
understandably less than keen to drive and the train is very slow,
but then Jackie suggested the bus, which leaves from the city of
Lucca (about 45 minutes from Limano) every hour and takes a bit more
than an hour. She also offered Nick up as our guide to a free car
park – they live most of the time in Lucca and he was due to go
back tomorrow to pick up their son and take him to the doctor.
No comments:
Post a Comment