May 1: Ferentillo to Labro

Previous day: April 30: Spoleto to Ferentillo

Today we leave Ferentillo to walk to Labro, which On Foot Holidays classes as a "medium" difficulty hike: 5 hours to cover 15 km, with a cumulative uphill distance of 600 m (plus a like amount downhill).Tonight, we stay at Casa Luce Due Archi.

Breakfast was good, but nothing special: prosciutto, cheese, and mediocre bread. But really good apple jam and sharp marmelade, and perhaps because I asked (only partially in jest) for half a liter of coffee, we got a large pitcher with enough for each of us to have two cups. We paid for the beer we’d had yesterday, but because Shoshanna had been sick and unable to finish her dinner, our hostess insisted on giving us the dinner beer for free. We ran into language difficulties when I asked her about the municipal hotel tax, as we didn’t want to leave her responsible for that cost. (It’s usually only a couple euros per person per night; not much, but it was the principle of the thing.) Unfortunately, I lacked the correct name of the tax, and couldn’t describe it to her in a way that was meaningful. Fortunately, one of her friends had dropped by, and his English was good enough that he could explain it to her. (I didn’t catch the first part of the phrase, but the second half was “soggiorno”, which relates to staying at a place.) She hadn’t heard of this before, possibly because the agriturismo was outside a city and thus not subject to such a tax.

Ferentillo

Ferentillo from below.

We’d called Stefano, our local guide, the previous day to ask about the weather, as Shoshanna’s online check had suggested a risk of thunderstorms, and I really didn’t want to risk hiking in high mountains during a thunderstorm; you don’t want to be exposed to lightning when you’re one of the highest targets. Also, though we have adequate gear for sustained light to moderate rain, it won’t withstand heavy sustained rain. Stefano suggested the worst of the storm would probably miss us, particularly if we got off to an early start, and he proved correct. We left by 9 AM, and had more than an hour of dry weather before the rain began. At first, it was mostly light enough we didn’t bother with jackets. It gradually increased to the point that we stopped and armored up, and for the next couple hours, walked in relatively sustained light rain. As a result, fewer photos than we might otherwise have taken. It was mostly pleasant, except after we crossed a saddle and began our downward hike, when it became windy and the temperature dropped.

I have two very sophisticated and high-tech devices I use for hiking in the rain. The first solves a problem with the raincovers of all backpacks that I’ve seen: they only cover the outside edge of the pack; if it rains hard enough, water runs down the back of your raincoat and soaks the backpack. So I cut up a dollar-store shower curtain to a shape that covered the top of the back to the bottom, and that lies inside the straps, so you can put on and take off the pack without having to move the cover. Works like a charm, though my seamstress skills are not good enough I’d expect it to work in serious rain. The other device is my patent-pending camera shield: a supermarket plastic bag whose handles have been cut so that you can retie them around the camera’s neck strap (so the bag won’t blow away if you let go of it). The camera then rides inside the bag, and any time the rain slows enough to allow a picture, you simple pull the camera out of the bag, snap your shot, and return it to the bag. Works great!

Today was nominally an easier hike than yesterday, but in practice, after a nice and largely horizontal stroll through Ferentillo and on south towards Arrone, the midway point, it got difficult. We stopped in one of the few shops that was open so Shoshanna could use the bathroom before we headed out into the wilderness again, and I bought an Americano coffee while she used the facilities as a form of “bathroom rent”. This was a three-saucer deal: the first held a small pitcher of milk, the second was a pot of boiling water, and the third was the actual coffee—espresso, thus small, dense, and bitter. You add the hot water to dilute the espresso and increase it to a moderately satifying volume, then pour in milk. Very good coffee, but quite the production. We also pondered pizza as a snack to sustain us, but it was May day, a holiday in much of Italy, and few places were open. The one place that was still firing up the oven, so we would have had to wait at least half an hour, and I wanted to get us over the highest mountain early, in case the thunderstorm appeared.

After Arrone, we faced a 350-m climb (about 1200 feet) through pleasant countryside, alternating between pastures and olive plantations and then ascending into woodland. On Foot called the slope “gentle”, but I’d say moderate at least. Particularly after yesterday’s effort, it was a long, slow slog. The scenery and the pleasure of forcing one’s body to this level of exertion justify the slog, but we can both see the daycoming when we can’t keep doing this kind of hike.

We did eventually reach the top of the climb, crossed over a saddle between two peaks, and began our descent into a lush valley, with fields of grass so green they looked like the felt on a pool table. Also fields of what looked to be rye or possibly wheat, often filled with blazing red poppies. Also fields of what appeared to be some legume (from the opposite side of the drainage ditches, they looked like yellow pea flowers) but might have been canola. All the fields slope gently down towards Lake Piediluca (“at the foot of the woodlands”). Better still, the rain began tapering off, so we could enjoy the beatiful view.
Lunch was late, among other things because the first two restaurants we tried suddenly had no space unless we had a reservation, which I suspect from the host’s look was code for “we’d really rather not let damp and smelly riffraff like you two inside where you’ll scare the other customers”. Eventually, a little after 2 PM, we found a place called Restaurant Eco that was willing to take us in. They’re right on the lake, with a lovely view, so we ate watching the water and the several ducks that kept cruising past the terrace hopefully. (Early in the season, so the terrasse still had thick plastic sheets creating a closed-in space. Chilly!)

Piediluca valley

Descent to Piediluca.

We thought the name “Eco” was short for “ecological”, but apparently it’s just the Italian spelling of “echo”, because the perfectly conical mountain facing the restaurant on the other side of the lake creates echoes. We shared a dish of ciriole alla fatoressa: tomato sauce with mushrooms and eggplant over that same thick and curly pasta we’d had earlier in the trip. Quite yummy. The half litre of wine we ordered, on the other hand, was not. (Probably the first outright bad wine we’ve had in Italy.) It was served cold, which is frankly weird for red wine, and though it had a nice aroma and pleasant start to the taste, it was thin and had an astringent finish. Desert was a really good tiramisu, followed by an acceptable but not great coffee. Not everyone knows how to make coffee American-style.

Amusingly, half a dozen young men (early 20s) seemed to be amused by us, probasbly because of our fractured discussions with the waiter clearly revealed us to be tourists. (Also see aforementioned re. smelly and damp and dissheveled.) There was much rapid-fire Italian banter, of which I caught only about a third. Most of it seemed to be playful mockery, but they did eventually communicate that they also wanted us to share what remained of their pitcher of white wine. After much persuading, I accepted, saying “just a little” and showing what I meant with my fingers; they ignored me and filled the wine glass. Being a good sport, I thanked them, toasted them in several languages, and had a good swallow. The wine was much better than our red. Shoshanna had a sip and a toast too. They appreciated the gestures, as they were all smiles, wished us a pleasant trip, and shook our hands before letting us leave.

Labbro from Piedilica

Labbro from Piediluca. No, we're not climbing that.

We were tired and footsore, and decided to skip the last stage of the hike—3 km and another 200 m of elevation gain up steep switchbacks to Labro. For most of the scheduled hikes, there are “bail out” options that let you call your next host for a pickup. Our instructions said not to call the host at our next B&B (Casa dei Due Archi) or arrive before 4, so we walked along the lakeshore until then, and called him. I started out in Italian, but as Luk is Belgian, and as my “end of day tired” Italian is not always wonderful, he suggested switching to English. He arranged to come get us, and drove us up steep and winding roads to Labro, which sits on a peak high above the surrounding countryside. He used to come here as a boy, as Labro is apparently very popular with Belgians, and he decided to stay here about 8 years ago. He and his wife bought and fully renovated an old stone house. Our room is lovely and what I’d call “Scandinavian modern”—think high-class Ikea and you’ll get the idea.

Luk told us about an ambulatory dinner that was being held in town as part of a spring festival; the basic notion was that you bought tickets, and then wandered from place to place exchanging the tickets for the various courses of the meal. As our B&B is on the northernmost wall of the city, looking back at Piedeluca, we figured it would be logical to simply head uphill, on the assumption that the central piazza would be located in that direction, and based on Luk’s statement that the city had “only three streets so you won’t need a map”. That was a bit of an oversimplification, or perhaps a private joke, and we took a long and circuitous route through many interesting streets that didn’t lead anywhere we needed to go. In fact, we only found the ticket office with the help of a sympathetic bystander.

Labro is an authentic Medieval city, with no vehicles allowed inside the gates, which means the streets and alleyways appear and disappear and interweave largely at random. Because the weather was bad (it was rainy, and he told us the temperature dropped more than 10°C in the past week) the event had been moved indoors, to the castle. (Which has apparently been occupied by the same family for the past 900 years.) We found the castle by the simple expedient of following a young couple with a baby in a stroller who knew where they were going; because of the cobblestone streets and steps everywhere, they had to carry the stroller, and the wife was having a bit of trouble. As I happened to know the Italian for “can I help?”, I found myself carrying my half of the stroller, and we found the castle quickly.

Dinner was a bargain: 13.5 euros each for bottled water, antipasti (five types of ham and sausage, cheese on crusty bread, tomatoes chopped and spread on a different bread, and a cold omelette), a primo (a new square-ish pasta with arrabiata-like tomato sauce plus bread) and a secondo (a huge sausage paired with fatty roasted pork). It was all tasty, but too much. There was also beer and wine at very good prices, but we figured we were too tired to risk more alcohol.

Getting home again was an adventure. Because we’d taken a circuitous route to the ticket office, it would have been a long and chancey walk to try following that route back to the B&B. And because we’d followed the young couple to the castle, we hadn’t really paid close attention to how we got there. About all we were sure of was (i) the B&B was “thataway” and (ii) we were very lucky that most, but by no means all, streets had at least some lighting. We started along a few trial and error routes, and didn’t see anything we recognized, but by the time we made it back to the castle to try again, we encountered a few people and asked for help. The first woman hadn’t heard of our B&B, and asked us to write its name; we had no paper, but could type it on the iPhone, only then to discover that she didn’t have her eyeglasses and couldn’t read it. So instead she yelled to a group of young adults who were having their smoke break. The first helper was a kid who knew vaguely where the B&B was, but headed off so quickly he lost us, and we lost him, never to be seen again. Fortunately, an older kid had tagged along, and with the help of Google maps, navigated us to the right ballpark—and Shoshanna spotted the B&B.

Lesson learned: When you navigate a medieval city at night, (i) bring a ball of string and unroll it as you go, or (ii) get a map and pay attention to how you walked.

Next day: May 2: Labro to Greccio