The grand tour of Tuscany September/October 2024 Week Three

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Sunday 15^th September

I’ve woken in a better state than I was when I went to bed last night and so we opted for a gentle bike ride. Does such a thing exist in Tuscany? No!  We decided to follow route 1 up to Montalceto and when it turned to horrible pebbly gravel tracks and steep gullied gravel roads, we abandoned it and decided to go onto the SP 60 and up to Chiusure. It was a steep climb in places with switch backs but E bikes made short work of it. Sublime views. Long gravel white driveways to hill top homes lined by Cypress trees. The Instagram generation out in droves at every layby taking forty or so poses! The younger generation really do need to get over themselves! Truly! I haven’t the patience to wait to get a lovely photo whilst a thousand modelling routines are gone through! Mag and I are ‘pray and spray’ photographers although with fairness, Maggie has an ability to size up, frame and take a stunning picture within 20 seconds of arrival somewhere. I have no idea how she does it! She just sees things ‘differently’!

The ground is baked dry, dusty and parched but still has an extraordinary beauty.  Knees, hips and backs were holding up well but the stop at a tiny Pizzeria with stunning views across the Tuscan landscape as far as the eye could see, in the little village of Chiusure, was most welcome.

As was the downward journey back to Asciano along a narrow twisty road through vineyards and olive groves. We passed a magnificent pond with huge turtles. Little baby ones the size of your palm floating in the sun. Gorgeous.

Back by 2pm for a snack in the van and reading books for a while and a 1600 ice cream at the square, ready for the 31st annual majorette area festival. Lots of people in different band uniforms, mainly reds, blues and whites. Lots of proud family gathering. The dance displays took place in front of the church, the bands standing on the steps. Then each group marched down the narrow street to two others stops to perform routines again. It was quirky and delightful. Our only puzzlement, for a festival, there were only two groups!

My hopes were raised when Maggie proudly announced that she had found a steam train running from Asciano. Now we are talking. I’m descended from a long line of family ancestors who worked for GWR going back generations. And I mean generations. Steam is in my DNA. Sadly, an enquiry at the tourist office, some bemusement on the part of those there, some quick internet research on their computers and? It only runs occasionally and the next one is late October! Ah well!

 

16th September Monday

Start mileage: 21 892

End mileage: 21 940

Distance driven: 38 miles

 

We emptied grey waste at Asciano and would have filled up with water this morning but for the most stupidly designed water supply. The tap is low on the bollard, so low in fact that you can’t connect a hose nor get a bucket or watering can under it. Useless. About as useful as a chocolate teapot! Just a bevy of motor homers all looking somewhat bemused. Lots of head scratching this morning! Even the normally quite inventive Dutch motor homers failed on this one.

We drove down the SS451 along beautiful rolling hills. All the cereal crops have been harvested but the fields still retain their golden hues as the stubble has yet to be ploughed up. Some ploughing is taking place. The soil here never ceases to amaze us. It is thick clay, huge slabs, and clumps. Ploughs are pulled by caterpillar tractors, the horsepower and traction needed to overcome the clingy soils. Plenty of pull over stops to get photographs of isolated farms on hill tops surrounded by cypress trees. But what was really spectacular so early in the morning were the thick deep clouds in the valleys. Like cotton wool wads pushed into the earth’s crevices. Beautiful and ethereal at the same time.

San Quirico D’Orcia is a quaint stop. The sosta is a car park which had a small funfair in it. We emptied black waste and filled up with water. You pay on a parking app ‘Easy’. It was a euro per hour. The town is geared to tourism and it had an eclectic art display scattered about the town and its walls. Coffee in the main Piazza, some dress and handbag shopping for Mag. Nothing purchased.

And then we set off down the famous SP146 to Montepulciano. Yes we stopped at the ‘Gladiator film set scenic viewpoint’; of course we did, as did hordes of others. Yes we stopped at the one where the cypress trees line the route up to a lovely agriturismo castle on the hill. So too did a coach of Dutch people! One lady insisted on rescuing some green shield bugs off the back of my T shirt with great hilarity.

The Sosta at Montepulciano is by the bus station. Easy to access. Ten euros for 24 hrs. Water is available. Couldn’t see the grey waste dump but the black waste is a manhole cover in the middle of the car park with a handle welded to it. Apparently!  We got the last space at the far end next to the bus station fence. Noisy! When someone left we immediately nabbed their spot – the car park space on the corner which of course proved to be far wider than all the rest – result! Space between us and our neighbours and a nice view between giant pine trees down a little valley containing vineyards and olive groves. It would have been a perfect stargazing space as the Milky way would be directly in front of us. Sadly, a full moon and thickening cloud put paid to that! We are in our third week of Tuscany! Stargazing? Either too much cloud, too much street lighting or a rising full moon. Zero. Squat diddly dee. Maggie just laughs. She finds it funny that I lug all this gear with us when we travel abroad and am then rarely able to use it! 

Montepulciano has stunning views across the countryside. We could see to Largo de Transenti in the south. The streets are hilly, there is a wide variety of artesian craft and food shops. Everything is expensive as one would expect. The architecture is impressive. We enjoyed our afternoon exploration.

There is a Conrad supermarket a six-minute walk from the sosta. The buses settle down in the evening and the night passes quietly and uneventfully. There were about thirty motorhomes all arranged along the outer perimeter of the car park overlooking the southern plains.

Costs: Sosta ten euros for 24 hours

 

Tuesday 17th  September

Starting mileage 21940

End mileage: 21996

Distance driven: 56 miles

The buses start moving and revving engines at 0630 in this sosta. We were awake anyway. Early morning rain pitter-pattering on the roof awoke us. By 0900 we were reversing out of our slot and making our way back along the SP146 to San Quirico D’Orcia; with a few photo stops on the way.  Down the main road to our first stop Bagno Vignoi.

Here we parked in a car park right at the centre of the village. The car park sign didn’t ban camper vans. The street sign across the road banned street parking for camper vans. Confused? We assumed that if you were in the car park it was OK! Well that was the excuse we were going with. Two hours for 3.4 euros paid via Easy App. Be warned there are very few parking slots in this car park for motorhomes. One obvious one on the far end where a motorhome had put his wheels on the grass behind along with his entire rear overhang. That way his front was within the marked parking bay. The only other slot we found was immediately left at the entrance – two on the side. One of them had a marked off area behind it and we put our overhang and bike rack over that so that we were within the marked bay at the front.

The springs here are fascinating. Walk down to the free ones and what you get is a steep gravel cum stepped path down in to the valley and to one side a massive outfall of travertine. It has a stream cascading down it. You can see sulphur deposits. There are four mills down through the system, all gated off. A captivating piece of industrial archaeology. The bottom pool is deep enough to swim in, of a brilliant light sapphire blue, crystal clear and surrounded by flowers. It is a beautiful spot with a travertine flow straight down into it. We feel that if you went for a swim, you’d emerge a whiffy, smelly smurf!

The village centre is built around the old Etruscan/roman pool. It bubbles away at one end. It is rustic and peaceful. A restaurant and bar along one side – great coffee by the way. And some little artisan shops around the edges. An amazing book shop – an eclectic collection of books with an ‘English corner’ but the decoration and layout – superb – full marks – thinking of turning our back dining room into a full-scale replica! Love it!

We were going to follow up with a visit to Bagno San Filippo but alas we had left it too late in the day. By the time we arrived there was nowhere to park. Not a single space. Impossible and so, reluctantly and with great chagrin, we had to drive on up to Abbadia San Salvatore where there was an excellent mining museum. The drive up was ‘challenging’; a few steep switch backs but easily done as buses and lorries get up there with no problem. Just take it easy. We never came out of third gear.

We arrived at 1245. The museum was closed until 1600. It was cold, drizzly, the car park was insane as we arrived at school home time and so managed to snarl up everyone exiting. They all looked bemused at a 7.5m motorhome stuck in their car park. We just smiled! Everyone was pretty good natured about it!

So rather than hang around we decided to head for our campsite for the night. It was up at Monticello Amiata. Which meant we would have to drive up and over the mountain that is Mount Amiata! The SP 81, SP45, SP58 to Arcidosso.

Now this was a journey. Steep, switch backs, twisty roads, lots of subsidence in the roads. Several times Bryony’s front wheels got tramlined! We never came out of third for the entire journey!

Scenery? Well spectacular in a very weird kind of way. A narrow road through the densest beech and birch forest I have ever seen, steep slopes above and below us and what made it really eery? Thick fog. I mean really thick visibility down to ten metres or so. Gloomy and then of course drizzle as well. Surreal doesn’t not describe the journey adequately.  I don’t know about Mag but as I leaned forward peering intently out over Bryony’s steering wheel I half expected the Cullen Clan to swoop out of the trees and land on the middle of the road; or the ‘Ents’, ‘Treebeard’ himself to suddenly uproot and come gather us up. Or worse, the giant spiders and ‘Aragog’ to suddenly come crashing down the slopes, intent on squaring us away for a future meal. Dragons, dwarves, fairies, goblins, centaurs and unicorns. At one point I was expecting them all to emerge from the thick fog that wrapped its grey damp tendrils around every tree. Yep, it really was that other worldly! Throw in hidden refugio buildings and summer second homes all boarded up, the air of abandonment, isolation, end of the world, was palpable. And quite exciting, in a ‘not normal’ sort of way.

As we climbed the SP7 from Arcidosso we twisted and turned through thick sweet chestnut groves that clung to the hillsides. Each one had its own ancient stone outbuilding with collapsing terracotta tile roof. We caught glimpses of one hill top town that defied gravity; perched on a precipitous slope, it was a marvel of ancient medieval engineering. How did it not slide downslope? Glimpses of ancient hill fort towers through clearings. A great journey!

SP7 proved a work out for arms, gears and brakes! Again, much of it spent in third gear going up and coming down. Especially coming down. Several times into second gear just to alleviate pressure on the brakes.  Bags of fun!

Our destination was the remote Lucherino campsite at Monticello Amiata. It is a nice site, I think. We haven’t seen it at its best. Since we have arrived, it has been raining hard.  There is a swimming pool, a restaurant (closed on a Tuesday…guess what day it is today?). Facilities are clean but dated but the showers give plenty of hot water. It is heavily wooded so in the summer the pitches are all shaded. 30 euros for one night. Pricey but we needed the electric hook up to charge up the ebike batteries and this was the only pace with electric we could find in the locality -so needs must! It does raise the issue of whether we should fit an inverter and all the implications surrounding that. A debate for another time.  Water and electric on each pitch. An 8.5m motorhome managed to navigate the small roads into the site and just and I mean just managed to reverse into one of the pitches. Great driving skill on his part frankly. I struggled! Pitches 42 to 48 are best if you are 6.8m+. The rest of the pitches are on terraces and small campervans will make it but not many coach-built motorhomes. Most will struggle due to steep and narrow access roads with overhanging branches.  Overall, it has a nice, ‘wild, laid-back’ vibe to it and we liked it. In sunny weather, it would be a great place to hang out for a few days.

The remnants of storm Boris have duly arrived. Its 1830 and its been raining solidly for an hour. Thick banks of grey cumulonimbus clouds are just above us. The gloom is descending. We are on a mud, grass, gravel underpinned pitch so we should get off ok tomorrow. Although the village is a 15 minute walk away, it is very small and thus far there has been no incentive to visit; just a mad dash up the terraces to the shower block and back again. There is a restaurant and mini bar market at the bottom of the drive and left – a seven-minute walk at most.

Much of northern and central Italy are under flood alert. Our task this evening to find where the sun is going to be. It means being swallow like, heading south! But one of us would like to visit the mining museum, he’s just not sure whether he can face going back over Mount Amiata once more. Perhaps heading for the thermal springs at Saturnia might be a better option?

Costs:  camping Lucherino 30 euros per night; car parking at Bagno Vitoni 3.4 euros.

Wednesday 18th September

Starting mileage: 21996

Finishing mileage: 22070

Distance driven: 74 miles

Do any of you get one of those really crappy days? They happen just very occasionally when everything that can go wrong does! You know the kind of day I mean. You get up, wish you hadn’t and it goes wrong from that first poor decision.  We should have stayed where we were for another day was my first thought this morning but I ignored the gut feeling!

Then we made some wrong decisions. My first wrong one was a desire to go back to the mining museum in Abbadia San Salvatore. After all my second subject is geology at degree level. Stupid decision! Followed by another one. One of us wanted to go back the route we came up yesterday as in back over the mountain roads across Mount Amiata. We knew the route, there would be very little traffic and the roads, whilst very twisty, were in relatively good condition. One of us, however, wanted to go via the SP 6 and SP 18, the scenic route around through Santa Fiore and Piancastagniao. One of us capitulated knowing it was probably a bad idea.

That road is the devil’s road! Pot holed! Cratered! Fractured! Subsided, collapsed, adverse cambers and rutted! An evil, shake you to your core, snatch your front wheels and take control of your steering wheel type road! Poor Bryony! Thank God for semi air suspension! I came out of third gear twice, I think.

Throw in artic lorries that came around on your side of the road on hairpin switch back bends. Then the buses, slow close up your backside the driver could have ridden our Ebikes for exercise whist they were still on the towbar bike rack. Insane road junctions. Yes, you know the ones, where no one has right of way; where everyone assumes they have right of way and where everyone pulls out in front of each other without warning and only a foot off the bumper of the car approaching them! Yep, them kind of junctions. And let’s not forget, how could we, those drivers who pull their car out over the stop line by half a length to block the road for everyone. Then there are the cars that reverse out of those parking slots in front of shops, with not so much as a look or a pause.

One of us by the time we arrived at the mining museum was feeling very stressed and frazzled!

Could it get any worse? Of course it could.

The mining museum was open! The receptionist took one look at us as we arrived and then made a phone call. She kept us waiting twenty minutes whilst she had a gossip. When we made to leave, she came out to tell us that the museum only had one tour that day at 1600 and we needed to book it. It was 1030!

Now I’m Welsh and I am, sorry to say, fully aware that in some parts of the very north of my beautiful, friendly country, there are still those who dislike the English; will deliberately only converse in Welsh when they approach them or who will keep them waiting whilst serving everyone else. So, believe me I know when it’s happening to me!

We left! Unimpressed. So did the German couple who came in after us just as we were leaving! Nothing on the museum website about booking tours that we could find. Irritating!

I never want to return to Abbadia San Salvatore. Ever! Google maps took us out of it a convoluted way and down roads which we just abandoned. It resulted in an eight-mile detour.  The place shall now and forever in our family history be referred to as ‘The place that shall not be named’!

We stopped at a petrol station for a coffee to sooth frayed nerves and then started the twisty, cratered, subsided descent of SP 18 to join the SR 2 south.

A bonus in the day so far – we found a station with LPG. The attendant filled up for us. Very slick, very quick; and ridiculously welcomed by us. Bonus! A masterclass in how it should be done, appreciated by one who is always terrified about filling the gas tank and who manages to bungle it somehow each time!

The sound of a Sosta run by a wine cooperative sounded appealing down by Lago di Bolsena. Free but they would appreciate it if you were to stop by their shop and buy some wine, or cheese, or meats, or honey, or biscuits. All locally produced by local farms.  Down by Montefiascone!

Should have read the fine print! The Sosta is right next to a huge wine vat place. Industrial complex size! It is fascinating though. You see the waste products from the fermenting process. We saw the grapes being tipped into one of the large steel hoppers with its Archimedes screw arrangement at the base. The wine and biscuits were exquisite and didn’t last long! There is free electric and water and there are dubious dumps for black and grey waste. It is right next to the SR2. Road noise is horrendous! 

So, a dubious decision here but with some silver lining.

“Lets go visit the town” suggested one of us upon arrival. “It’s about to rain and thunderstorms are predicted” said the other one cautiously!

Standing under various ‘arches’ in a miserable old town for a combined time of almost thirty minutes is time neither of us will ever get back. One of us just felt his entire lifeforce ebbing away! The thunderstorms directly overhead with forked lightening and torrential rain didn’t help the mood!

This town does not have much going for it to be honest although it is on one of the pilgrimage routes! Everywhere was closed but eventually we found a nice friendly bar and grabbed pizza, coffee and apricot pie slices. We dried out.

By now we were not on speaking terms. Well almost not. But, the frosty atmosphere thawed, we  discussed snippets of BBC news, the rain stopped, we escaped the bonkers traffic and drabness and called in at the wine cooperative shop which cheered us up. A cup of tea back at Bryony, one pack of very nice biscuits consumed and a snooze.

After three solid weeks on the road, we have decided to stop for four nights in Bolsena and are awaiting a reply from a campsite. We can do some cycling. We can process photos. We can, most importantly look and research where else we want to go in West Tuscany before Florence and we can decide whether we want to chase the sun back in the south of France and south east Spain. We have four and a bit weeks left of this trip. We could be very ambitious and head past Rome to Pompeii and Vesuvius and Capri! Maybe!

A chance to stop, pause, unwind. A chance to regain some rationality!  A chance to mend the leaky tap and the broken bathroom roof blind/screen. Check the oil, tighten a loose hinge on the driver’s cab door.

Cycle, paddle in the lake. Pause, unwind! And breathe!

Costs: LPG 9 euros; at cooperative shop 18 euros for wine and biscuits

 

Thursday 19th September

Starting mileage 22070

Finishing mileage 22081

Distance driven 11 miles

 

Despite a busy main road right next to us, we both slept very well. It was a lazy start to the morning as we had reached a decision. We were going to spend a whopping four whole nights at Bolsena by the side of the caldera lake.  We had contacted two campsites and only one got back to us so that was the one. Camping Pineta.

We emptied grey waste and made our way back along the SR 2. Stopped off at the Coop supermarket with enough food that we could survive four days and were on the site by 1030. 

It is a quaint site. All under trees which provide plenty of shade. Grass, hard earth pitches. You need long cables to reach the nearest electric box. Basic camper services tucked away in one corner of the site. Basic but very clean toilets and showers and a delightful little kiosk bar at the entrance. Great coffee and pastries for only 4 euros. Ridiculous when you think how much it would cost back in the UK.  The pitches are of a reasonable size, tight to get into but manageable with a little forethought.  There is a small open field for badminton and football. It is a 30 second walk to the lakeside, a 2-minute walk to the nearest black sand beach and a ten-minute walk into the town.

And on that walk into town you go up the most marvellous, possibly the absolute best we have ever seen, avenue of maple trees. They are huge, over 120 years old and just look stunning.

This morning, we walked into Bolseno. Browsed some delightful little craft shops – stain glass, olive wood, and making little note books. I brought a handmade one with a cover that has the winged horse Pegasus plus star charts plus a background of the milky way – all hand stitched.

Upper Bolseno is small with narrow alleyways, very old houses, hidden courtyards, and viewpoints. At the top is the fort and the church. It is small, uncrowded, and delightful.

The lake front is pleasant with some lovely bars to sit at. Sunsets from these will be stupendous.

This is a good decision. We are taking four days to chill, cycle, and plan the next four weeks. The weather is set to improve over the next few days as well.

It is good to stop for a while.

Costs: Camping Pineta 26 euros per night and all services included (Electric is only 3 amp though)

Friday 20th September

Is the ‘Firenzecard’ worth 85 euro?

Having booked a campsite on the edge of the city for three days with access into the city by bus or train, we made a list of the museums we wanted to see and then started researching the Firenzecard – 72 hours (3 days).

What a mine field and frankly is it a rip off? How many museums could you realistically see properly in 72 hours?  Do you want to plan your Florence visit like a military campaign?  And do you really have to actually phone and book a slot at the popular museums after getting the card because it can’t be done on-line? The answer is astonishingly, yes! We discovered that there were no slots for the Accademia and the David exhibit for at least eight weeks – that’s practically all booked up 6 to 8 weeks in advance!

Anyway, here to our mind are the advantages and disadvantages of buying the card based on last night’s research:

Advantages – priority access – skipping the line at major museums; entry to 60+ museums, churches and historical sites; flexibility with no need to reserve slots at most of them (exempting the major ones of course); extend its validity by reactivating it for an additional 48 hours within six months; having it as a digital card on your smartphone.

And the disadvantages?

Cost effectiveness – how many attractions can you visit purposefully in three days if a visit to just the Uffizi could take on average three to four hours. If you don’t have the digital version you have to go physical destinations in Florence to actually collect the card on your first day in the city! You have to do additional bookings of some of the popular sites by phone. For the Uffizi, Accademia and the Brancacci Chapel, you can prebook a date & time before arriving in Florence for the Uffizi and Accademia by calling + 39 055-294883 or booking direct at one of the ticket offices you'll find on the FirenzeCard website. For the Brancacci Chapel, there is a whole procedure to follow online from their website. Then there is only one visit per museum: each museum can only be visited ONCE during the 72 hours! 

We found this a useful website: https://www.visitflorence.com/florence-museums/is-firenze-card-worth-it.html  

I think we were probably very naïve here not booking Florence at a far earlier time. We wanted to keep our itinerary very flexible and really try and embrace the ‘just go anywhere’ philosophy. We’ve paid the price. We can visit the Uffizi but not the Accademia. So be it!

I went out to do some milky way photography. Living in forlorn hope really. A full moon, some scattered cloud and bright neon orange street lights. Not a chance. It just wasn’t dark enough for the milky way to show through!

 

And what about today?

The sun was shining. We were awake early. The EBikes were calling to us. I had the stupid idea of going to visit Civitas, the little walled city that is only accessible by a modern pedestrian bridge. It is just above the town of Bagoregip.

Tourist information provide two free, yes free, detailed 1:25,000 maps for the Lago region showing all the walking routes. Yes – free, detailed maps – amazing!

I am so embarrassed about this. I misread the contours. A geography teacher for thirty-five years! It’s shocking! I hang my head in shame! The upshot is we climbed steadily non-stop for 12 miles. Yep, not a single bit of flat or downhill. A steady gradient which we did in ‘tour’ mode mostly (our Ebikes have 4 settings – eco, tour, port and turbo). We stopped for a coffee in Bagoregip. We stopped for another at the ticket office to Civitas. Did we bother to pay the 5 euros each to walk across the bridge and into the city? No. One walled city has become like another, we have visited so many. Coffee and admiring the views was great. The area is built on Tuffa volcanic ash rock and we could see some necropolis entrances carved into the near vertical walls of the old ash falls. We secretly laughed at the little buses which brought tourists up the final stretch. Think slightly bigger than school minibus and absolutely jammed in, standing and like the worst London tube ride you could imagine.

There and back was a 20 mile round trip which took us an hour an three quarters up and around 30 minutes back down. I clocked 35 mph on an Ebike – how exciting!  Great views of the Lake from above as well. 

One or two hairy moments. Italian drivers have no concept of distance when passing cyclists – so many were less than a metre; they would overtake on bends and pull right in front of us as another car came around it.

In the afternoon after a siesta back at the motorhome, we strolled into town for a gelato.  Watched all the teenagers hanging out around the side, tolerated by the Gelato owners. Noisy but friendly, teenagers are the same the world over really.

Maggie visited a dress shop, found a dress she rather liked and discovered for a cotton dress which would be £40 at most in the UK – 215 euros. Wow her reactions can be fast at times. It was back on the rack within a nano second!

And that was today. Tonight we will try and book slots for a couple of other museums and plan what we are doing tomorrow. A cycle ride around part of the lake, the flatter side, sounds nice!

 

Saturday 21st September

That bike ride around the lake? Didn’t happen.

It was the breakfast what done us in M’Lud!

Coffee and pastries for breakfast at the little bar at the campsite entrance. We lazed and read the papers on line and before you know it, well it was 1000am We actually sat down at 0830! Oops!

The bar is frequented by locals and its lovely to see Italians chatting away. A group of seven senior gentlemen behind us, browsed the papers, discussed the issues of the day, put the world to rights! Well, we think that is what they did. They could have been passing comment on the poor fashion choices of their English neighbours for all I know!

Then we had two hours under the trees out of the glare of the sunshine, reading, video editing, finishing the on-line papers.

Then we had a walk down to the bar at the end of the wonderful avenue of trees. The aim? To have a light lunch and a beer overlooking a sparkling blue lake!

Now this is a motorhome blog and regular readers will know that I also own a small boat, Arwen. I’ve written a blog over the last 15 years about my adventures with Arwen.

It was the elderly gentleman who caught my eye down by the marina. He was scraping away flaking varnish off a wooden boom, next to a stunning wooden boat, moored alongside. Now at a guess, I suspected the boat to be a Seabird. A fine boat with a classic heritage. The gentleman certainly new how to scrape and varnish a piece of wood. As I passed by, he caught me admiring the boat and started up a conversation in a mixture of English and Italian.

I was right. It was a Seabird Yawl. He was from Rome. He had sailed the boat when he was twenty five. Now he’d owned it for the last five years having tracked it down. The previous owner couldn’t sell it and was about to send it to the scrap yard! Its engine was coming out next week for a full strip down and rebuild. He’d already been working on restoring the hull and decks and now finally was sorting out the spars and masts. He was hoping she would be ready for winter sailing and if I was still around, he’d like to offer me a few sails as crew.

I was mesmerised. Like many Italians, the man knew how to tell a good story with pride, emotion and enthusiasm. Charming, gracious, funny and knowledgeable, I lost thirty minutes of my day just like that.

A synopsis of why this little boat is so important in terms of nautical history then and it will serve to explain this man’s pride in his acquisition and his painstaking restoration of it. The Sea Bird yawl was designed by Thomas Fleming Day in 1901. It was intended to be easy to build, easy to handle and designed for amateur sailors. A practical design for long passages. A hard chined hull with either a centre board, or in this case a deep lead filled keel for better ocean passage performance. Twenty five feet length, around eight feet wide, this gentleman’s boat was converted from its original gaff headed yawl rig to a Bermudian sail. He is converting back to a gaff yawl because a jib, mainsail and mizzen sail are easier to handle at his age. Day, himself, crossed the Atlantic in a Sea Bird in 1911. This Sea Bird has also crossed the Atlantic in the early 1950’s – all the way to Rome. It was transported across country to the Italian lakes for many years. Now it is on Lago di Boslena!

Through a mixture of English, Italian and google translate, I learned that he has found the boat easy to sail and handle, stable and comfortable in a variety of conditions and quite seaworthy. He loves the boats classic lines and traditional sail rigging.

I know I married a keeper. Whilst all this was going on, Maggie sat under a shady tree and read the papers. She’s a good ‘un!

Her reward was a beer and sandwich at the bar with a lakeside table and views across the lake under a near cloudless sky. Just a few fluffy cotton ball clouds around the periphery. A few souls were sunbathing on the town’s black sand beach. A newly wedded couple arrived in a cute car and then went walkabout for their photos.

We walked lunch off by going to the other end of the road past Il Lago, the other campsite, which couldn’t be bothered to respond to our emails about potential booking. Their loss. We like Camping Pineta at the other end!

Back on site, more chilling outside, more reading. Showers mid-afternoon to avoid the evening rush.

A chilled-out day. Tomorrow we will go for the bike ride!

We are really loving the ‘Bolsena’ vibe! It has been a day of giggles. For example, three weeks in, should you warn your loved one that they are sitting under a branch on which there is a wood pigeon directly overhead? Or should you just let the pigeon poop to get the laugh? And the revenge for them being so grumpy in week two? Tough decision! 

Yes, of course, the warning was given! Ah true love, eh?