15th June 2000 Garfagnana
Trip Start
Apr 27, 2000
1
50
81
Trip End
Aug 09, 2000
Garfagnana,
Italy
Thursday, June 26, 2003
Well, we set out with the best intentions, but only made it two hair pins down the mountain before we realised we had left the spare film at home. Back up the mountain, back down the mountain and the valley to Pietrabuona to buy onion and potatoe focaccia for breakfast. No matter what Mary believes, neith the Pietrabuona or Villano foccacia comes anywhere near being as good as that of Ristorante Bargo Gionotti in Lucca (also a takeaway pizza and antipasto shop).
Next stop the Montactini markets. We went last Thursday , but didn't have time to make our final selections. This time we bought sandals for Kent, two pairs of shoes for me, a bag for Mel, and an olive oil can. These markets are the major ones for the distributors of the local shoe and leather bag manufacturers. Good value. The tourist information office delivered bad news; the battle of the bridge in Pisa was to be held on the weekend after we left for Vincenza, but more about this later.
Finaly, at 11.00 am, we headed up into the mountains to drive to the Garfagnana. The Garfagnana are part of the mountains that separate Tuscany from Emilia-Romagna. As I understand it, they are particularly high, and it is winter snow country. The main purpose of the trip was to visit Castelnuovo di Garfagnana and Castiglione di Garfagnana, which both feature in the book The Most Beautiful Towns in Tuscany. We decided that as we were starting out from Montacatini, we might as well immediatly head into the mountains and drive up to la Lima, from where we would head west to Bagni di Lucca, and then take the north west road through Barga into the Garfagnana. Now, we are becoming fairly accustomed to having to revise our expectations and impressions of what most places are realy like, so we weren't surprised to discover that the area is nothing like we had imagined/expected. The drive up to La Lima, (which only deserves mention because it is near where the small mountain road intersects with a slightly wider mountain road, that is an alternative route to Modena {pronounced "mod ena"} in Emilia-Romagna) is realy very pretty. Narrow and fairly windy, it takes about 45 minutes. Beautifully wooded mountains; mainly Chestnuts and Acacia, pretty villages, and every now and then a glimpse on a mountain peek in the distance of mountain top villages. It is a good drive for the passenger, but not much time to enjoy the sights for the driver. From Montacatini to Prunetta (remember, that's where Ches had lead me off course two weeks earlier when driving to Vellano???), it is all up mountain. From there to la Lima, it is winding down the mountain into the valley which contains the road running to Bagni di Lucca. The mountains of the Garfagnana are towereing above you to the right. Realy stunning scenic drive. The road is easy, and most of the views are opening up in front of the car as you drive, so the driver isn't left out. Apart from some dramatic mountains, cliffs and theTorrente Lima (River) which follows the same path down the valley, there are beautiful medieval villages purched on cliff faces and on mountain tops. The rivers throughout the region have wide banks, to cope with the spring snow melt, but by summer are running in narrower beds, over small rapids, with the rest of the river bed strewn with primarily white gravel and rocks. Very, very scenic. With time getting away from us, we didn't stop in Bagni di Lucca. It is primarily a thrermal baths town like Montecatini, but without any evidence of the wealth or style of Montecatini.
If you stay on this road (the SS12), it takes you directly to Lucca. That is, it is an alternative, scenic route betwen Lucca and Modena, as opposed to the motorway via either Firenze and Bologna, or La Spezia and Parma. We turned north, 4km after passing through Bagni di Lucca, where the Lima joins the Fiume Serchio (River). It is also the logical place for the timber wood chipping industry to be based, and there are mountains of woodchips in yards beside the river, and the aroma is stunning. The Garfagnana mountains are still to the right, and now the Serchio River to the left, as you drive north-west. Unfortunately, the road also passes through an almost continuous chain of small villages and strip towns for the 10 km to Barga, and a further 10 km to Castelnuovo di Garfagnana. Traffic is always heavy and slow. With occasional stretches of countryside afording views of the river, and the mountains, we made it to Castelnuovo at around 1.30 pm. It was so late, we decided to go straight on to our lunch restaurant La Ciliegetta (the Little Cherry) at Isola Santa. Mary had recomended this restaurant as being realy special, and for once she was right.
We spent 15 minutes hopelessly lost in and around Castelnuovo. Signposting is abysmal, and when I found myself jammed into a street that had been sealed off for the morning street markets, Ches went for help. Eventually made it on to the right road, which leads from Castelnuovo to Mass and Carrara on the coast. In effect, it is the only road over the mountains known as the Alpi Apuane, which is both a national park, and the source of marble. Isolasanta is half way over the mountains, at 10 km from Castelnuovo. The distances aren't great, but at an average driving speed of 50kmph, either because of the road conditions or traffic, or simply because you are terified of being on the wrong road and checking every second sign post, progress is always slower than planned. We arrived at the restaurant at around 2.00 pm and were concerned that we might be too late for lunch. Almost no such thing in Italy. We still don't know how or why, given Mary's instructions, but we ended up on a road that hooked back north-east from Isolasanta, and the restaurant is actually some killometers along this road, all on its ownsome in the middle of nowhere. More than a restaurant, it is a substantial "hotel", built with no semblance of a plan out of the local stone and slate roofs. It wanders around the side of the mountain on different levels. While there is a large dining room upstairs, primarily used for functions, the restaurant is quite small with maybe 12 tables and a capacity of 50 or so. There were about 20 diners at table when we arrived. The room is built right in under the eaves of the roof, with small windows set high in the walls, so not exactly opened up to the views. What views. A vast, steep and deep valley below us, and on the other side, towereing mountain peaks, bare of any vegetation at the tops, forests in sections and unbelievable, the odd terraced sections of mountainside. We still don't know what they were growing.
The deal with lunch, is that they just keep bringing food. You eat what you want, and cry for mercy when you are full. They then produce a bill, which is very reasonable. Most people were either eating their secondi piatti or desert. We realy were starting late for this type of meal. The waiter had almost no English, and yet was the most helpful, accomodating we have had to date (later we suspected he is the owner or part of the family). He brough us a glass of icy cold Prosecco (It's the sparkling white wine from the Veneto region). Then all these plates began appearing (Antipasti). Warm cod fritters, slices of meats (brawn, proscuito and lard), bean salad, farro salad (farrow with finely diced carrot, potatoe, mozerella and mortadella sausage-fantastic), pickled cabage and sweet corn, pickled vegetables, mixed bruscetta of plain garlic, tomatoe and cheese and mushroom. Then the prima piatti. Lasagne in a sauce which we think was a combination of cheese, pesto and bechamel, and farfalle with tomato, basil and carrot. Next a liquer glass each of icy cold lemon vodka to clense the palate. On with the secondi piatti. A platter of crumbed lamb cutlets, beef with artichokes and sliced cheese, thinly sliced pork and proscuitto with bechamel sauce. Roasted potato chunks and a salad. Declined the cheese course and cut straight to fruit and custard slice, panna cotta with a berry coulis and custard sponge. One espresso. A bottle of house red and jugs of water. L57,000 ($53.00). That's it. Not each. TOTAL L57,000. On the way out, we bought a bottle of Lemon Vodka. Now every night we have to decide between Vodka, Stregga and Sambucca. Well, I do. Ches goes straight for the vodka.
As we were finishing our meal, an electrical storm ripped through the other side of the valley. The mountains vanished into clowd and driving rain. Lightning flashed and thunder went off like cannons. I've said it before, but electrical storms are amazing in Italy. Never heard anything so loud. Lasted for fifteen minutes and blasted us with wind, and then cleared to a brilliant clear sky. We walked along the road for a kilometer. Great rock slides on either side of the road, suggest this road is repositioned occasionally. We also noticed that it is common to build marble and stone shrines on the side of roads. We don't know if it is because they were killed on the mountain, lived in and loved the mountains, or just lived here.
After walking off part of our meal, we decided to continue along the road to Careggine, which I had penciled in to our plan for the day. I had read somewhere that there was an artificial lake which you can view from this town. The story was, that in creating the lake, they had drowned a medieval town, and the spire of the shurch was still visible above the waters. The truth is that the lake is barely visible from the village, and even with a telephoto lense, I couldn't see much. Careggine was interesting in that it appears to be one of those very small isolated, mountain villages fighting to survive. As one of the guidebooks describes it, the Grfagnanas' major export for the past thirty years has been "people". Employment isn't great in an area that has few natural resources, and not a great deal of arable land. It probably depended upon forestry industries, but even these are dramatically reduced. Many young people aren't prepared to stay in such an isolated area with few services. The cost of providing even basic services is so high that the declining population makes it even more uneconomic. Mary tells us that there are abanoned villages throughout these mountain regions. Even Aramo, which is on a mountain top in the valley, just across from Vellano, has seen it's population decline from 200 to 50 in the past ten years. Basically, the populations are ageing. Careggine seemed to be largely populated by older people; they have a visiting librarian to open their library once a week, there were perhaps three shops, and little to invite you to spend any sort of time. What is visible from here, and the road leading back down the mountains, is the valley between the Garfagnana and the Alpe Apuani. Dotted all over the mountains and cliffs, are around a dozen medieval villages, including Castelnuovo di Garfagnana.
It was very late in the afternoon by the time we returned to Castelnuovo di Gargagnana, so we decided to head straight back down the valley, following the Fiume Serchio to Lucca. As I mentioned, the traffic is always heavy on this road, and after 5.00pm when all the shops reopened, and the locals came out on pushbikes, it was extremely slow going. Still, the views were pretty good, particularly from Castelnuovo to Barga, where you drop down out of the mountains and the river is running farly wide and fast. The river is pretty its entire length, and there are numerous glimses of it for the drive. Given the time, it would have been nice to stop occasionally to take it all in. The sign posting is particularly bad as you get to within 10 kms of Lucca, but by some miracle, we managed to take the road over the hills via Marla and on to the Lucca-Pescia road and home.
