How much blissing-out can you do in a day, and live?
It was with a sense of determination that we set out today to find the elusive ruins of the Abbazia di Val di Castro. We’d no idea how lovely the day would be—except that they all have been, so far.
Yesterday we’d lost track of the Abbey round about Fabriano, losing ourselves around the railway and the SS76 road. But today we sat down with the maps and worked it out, step by step, village by village: first head for Cupramontana, then pass it by and continue south towards Apiro; turn for Piaggia, passing through Madonna della Fonte; cross-country to Domo; Montefiascone; Precicchie; San Giovanni; Vigne … Tiny frazione with romantic, poetic names, on mountain-tops or in valleys, amidst awe-inspiring scenery …
But we stopped for no photos in this part of our trip, however lovely or awe-inspiring the views. Our ambition was to discover those elusive ruins of The Abbey (which was founded w--a--y back in 1009 by a certain Saint Romuald, dissolute-nobleman-turned-saint, who died there in 1027). Not that we had much idea of what we might find, beyond “ruins”: it was just so galling that we weren’t able to find it yesterday!
And then—success! We turned off the “main road” (okay, main
country road) at Vigne, and descended towards a group of buildings amongst the fields and meadows in the valley below us, behind the screen of trees. We’d found it!—St Romuald’s abbey, no longer ruined (Jane’s and Ian’s book was out of date), but now restored and refurbished as an agriturismo, a sort of government-sponsored farm-stay.
We drove down to the abbey courtyard and took several photos, revelling in the sunlit peace of this remote valley where we could
hear nothing but birdsong, the lowing of cows, and the breeze in the cypresses … Driving back up the road we went down by, we paused again to view the valley and the abbey and absorb their tranquillity.
(Ian told us, afterwards, that we were the first of their visitors to have succeeded in finding the Abbey. We felt proud … Such skilled tourists!)
Our next target for the day, after the Abbey, was Urbino, a good 60 km to the north-north-west, as the crow flies. Unfortunately (or otherwise), we’re not crows, and nor’s our faithful Chariot. Google Maps will tell you that the “quickest” route (just over an hour and a half) goes way out eastwards to the coast, north-west up along the coastal highway, and then south-west (inland) from Rosciano: three sides of a square (east, north, west), comprising over 130 km. But
we’re made of tougher stuff, and determined on a more interesting overland route, up mountain and down valley, roughly north-west all the way: only 100 km, but over 2 hours if we didn’t stop on the way … (We did.)
From Vigne we headed southwest, up to Poggio San Romualdo (poggio translates as “hillock”. Central Italians have a strange idea of what’s a hillock; San Romualdo’s altitude is almost 1000 metres), and from there down a wild succession of hairpin bends well known to mountain cyclists, through Albacina with its castle, and briefly onto the SS76, through Fabriano, then northwards through Sassoferrato (thus completing the “Frasassi Circuit”) and so into unknown country, heading north for Pergola …
Contemplating the tiny ancient villages we went through, the steep hills and olive-dressed
valleys and distant mountains, adjectives like “awesome” come easily to us now; believe us, we’ve done awesome!
Driving round steep, narrow, twisting roads with precipitous drops on one side or the other, we wondered what it would be like in winter. The six-foot black-and-yellow striped poles that marked the edges of the road at many of the higher points gave us an important clue, we felt ...
Yesterday we’d lost track of the Abbey round about Fabriano, losing ourselves around the railway and the SS76 road. But today we sat down with the maps and worked it out, step by step, village by village: first head for Cupramontana, then pass it by and continue south towards Apiro; turn for Piaggia, passing through Madonna della Fonte; cross-country to Domo; Montefiascone; Precicchie; San Giovanni; Vigne … Tiny frazione with romantic, poetic names, on mountain-tops or in valleys, amidst awe-inspiring scenery …
But we stopped for no photos in this part of our trip, however lovely or awe-inspiring the views. Our ambition was to discover those elusive ruins of The Abbey (which was founded w--a--y back in 1009 by a certain Saint Romuald, dissolute-nobleman-turned-saint, who died there in 1027). Not that we had much idea of what we might find, beyond “ruins”: it was just so galling that we weren’t able to find it yesterday!
And then—success! We turned off the “main road” (okay, main
country road) at Vigne, and descended towards a group of buildings amongst the fields and meadows in the valley below us, behind the screen of trees. We’d found it!—St Romuald’s abbey, no longer ruined (Jane’s and Ian’s book was out of date), but now restored and refurbished as an agriturismo, a sort of government-sponsored farm-stay.We drove down to the abbey courtyard and took several photos, revelling in the sunlit peace of this remote valley where we could
hear nothing but birdsong, the lowing of cows, and the breeze in the cypresses … Driving back up the road we went down by, we paused again to view the valley and the abbey and absorb their tranquillity.(Ian told us, afterwards, that we were the first of their visitors to have succeeded in finding the Abbey. We felt proud … Such skilled tourists!)
Our next target for the day, after the Abbey, was Urbino, a good 60 km to the north-north-west, as the crow flies. Unfortunately (or otherwise), we’re not crows, and nor’s our faithful Chariot. Google Maps will tell you that the “quickest” route (just over an hour and a half) goes way out eastwards to the coast, north-west up along the coastal highway, and then south-west (inland) from Rosciano: three sides of a square (east, north, west), comprising over 130 km. But
we’re made of tougher stuff, and determined on a more interesting overland route, up mountain and down valley, roughly north-west all the way: only 100 km, but over 2 hours if we didn’t stop on the way … (We did.)From Vigne we headed southwest, up to Poggio San Romualdo (poggio translates as “hillock”. Central Italians have a strange idea of what’s a hillock; San Romualdo’s altitude is almost 1000 metres), and from there down a wild succession of hairpin bends well known to mountain cyclists, through Albacina with its castle, and briefly onto the SS76, through Fabriano, then northwards through Sassoferrato (thus completing the “Frasassi Circuit”) and so into unknown country, heading north for Pergola …
Contemplating the tiny ancient villages we went through, the steep hills and olive-dressed
valleys and distant mountains, adjectives like “awesome” come easily to us now; believe us, we’ve done awesome!Driving round steep, narrow, twisting roads with precipitous drops on one side or the other, we wondered what it would be like in winter. The six-foot black-and-yellow striped poles that marked the edges of the road at many of the higher points gave us an important clue, we felt ...
A feature of our first day’s journey (weeks ago now, it seems) was the fields rouged with poppies, not only in Flanders but also into 
Luxembourg and France. Here they were again, and with many other wildflowers in the roadside verges. We had a long way to go, and didn’t stop often (and we were nervous of stopping on these constantly winding narrow roads), but at one spot we saw a farmhouse in a poppy field, and as we rounded a bend found a white van stopped, with an elderly couple picking cherries from a roadside tree. The road was relatively straight for a stretch here, so we stopped, got out, and photographed the poppies … but (to our subsequent regret), didn’t pick any cherries. 
We hit Urbino mid-afternoon, and faced the same sort of problem as we did at Murano: it was a little late for lunch. But, having found a car park outside the walls at the top end of the city (the photo shows some of the magnificent view from alongside the car), we walked down a couple of steep cobbled streets and came to a piazza which had an open restaurant (or, puzzlingly, Macelleria e Polleria, a “butchers and poulterers”—perhaps the place next door? Looks like the same place, in the photo!); but we didn’t note its name. It offered pleasant shady outdoor tables and a friendly waitress with
reasonable English, but not much on the menu that was still available. (“Sorry luv, spam’s orff.”) Margaret had pasta, but Don bravely ordered formaggio grillo, translated (on the menu) as “toasted cheese”; it proved to be a decent-sized slab of a softish cheese (mozzarella?) that had been stuck under a grill. Just that, and a plate; nothing else but knife and fork. But an Italian beer helped wash it down successfully.
San Leo (four days ago, or was it a month? We’ve packed in so much!) bills itself as La Citta del Arte, the “City of Art”. So does Urbino, and, we expect, many another Italian city. But not many others will have UNESCO World Heritage Site labels attached to them! The city was completely rebuilt in the 15th Century under Duke Federico da Montefeltro, as an “ideal city and art capital” (according to the The Marche guidebook).
Like every Italian town, it seems, Urbino has a piazza della Repubblica, which in this case is in
the dip between the Monte to the northwest (where we came in) and the Poggio to the south. We descended the Monte by the via Raffaelo, went through the piazza, and ascended the Poggio to the piazza Duce Federico, where the ducal palace (in the photo) and the Cathedral lie cheek-by-jowl on the western edge. Equally plain on the outside, both contain many treasures of art which we didn’t see on this visit, though we did enter a shop opposite and buy a souvenir basso-rilievo plaque of the city as a thank-you gift for 
Jane and Ian. If we visit them again some day, we hope to see it decorating a wall somewhere in the Cantinone.
But our attention was caught by a narrow alleyway between the palace and the cathedral, which led down through a vaulted passage with ridged pathway (against the winter snow and ice) to a footpath along the tops of the city walls. From the footpath, we had a lovely view across the oh!-so-Italian roofs of the western extension of the city, to the hills rising beyond.
Luxembourg and France. Here they were again, and with many other wildflowers in the roadside verges. We had a long way to go, and didn’t stop often (and we were nervous of stopping on these constantly winding narrow roads), but at one spot we saw a farmhouse in a poppy field, and as we rounded a bend found a white van stopped, with an elderly couple picking cherries from a roadside tree. The road was relatively straight for a stretch here, so we stopped, got out, and photographed the poppies … but (to our subsequent regret), didn’t pick any cherries. 
We hit Urbino mid-afternoon, and faced the same sort of problem as we did at Murano: it was a little late for lunch. But, having found a car park outside the walls at the top end of the city (the photo shows some of the magnificent view from alongside the car), we walked down a couple of steep cobbled streets and came to a piazza which had an open restaurant (or, puzzlingly, Macelleria e Polleria, a “butchers and poulterers”—perhaps the place next door? Looks like the same place, in the photo!); but we didn’t note its name. It offered pleasant shady outdoor tables and a friendly waitress with
reasonable English, but not much on the menu that was still available. (“Sorry luv, spam’s orff.”) Margaret had pasta, but Don bravely ordered formaggio grillo, translated (on the menu) as “toasted cheese”; it proved to be a decent-sized slab of a softish cheese (mozzarella?) that had been stuck under a grill. Just that, and a plate; nothing else but knife and fork. But an Italian beer helped wash it down successfully.San Leo (four days ago, or was it a month? We’ve packed in so much!) bills itself as La Citta del Arte, the “City of Art”. So does Urbino, and, we expect, many another Italian city. But not many others will have UNESCO World Heritage Site labels attached to them! The city was completely rebuilt in the 15th Century under Duke Federico da Montefeltro, as an “ideal city and art capital” (according to the The Marche guidebook).
Like every Italian town, it seems, Urbino has a piazza della Repubblica, which in this case is in
the dip between the Monte to the northwest (where we came in) and the Poggio to the south. We descended the Monte by the via Raffaelo, went through the piazza, and ascended the Poggio to the piazza Duce Federico, where the ducal palace (in the photo) and the Cathedral lie cheek-by-jowl on the western edge. Equally plain on the outside, both contain many treasures of art which we didn’t see on this visit, though we did enter a shop opposite and buy a souvenir basso-rilievo plaque of the city as a thank-you gift for 
Jane and Ian. If we visit them again some day, we hope to see it decorating a wall somewhere in the Cantinone.But our attention was caught by a narrow alleyway between the palace and the cathedral, which led down through a vaulted passage with ridged pathway (against the winter snow and ice) to a footpath along the tops of the city walls. From the footpath, we had a lovely view across the oh!-so-Italian roofs of the western extension of the city, to the hills rising beyond.
We walked round northwards to the via Mazzini, which took us east back to the piazza della Repubblica, and from there made our way back up the via Raffaelo and rightwards up the via Bramante to the Porta Santa Lucia we had entered by. The car took us east towards Pesaro, where we drove onto the SS16, the Strada Nazionale Adriatica Sud, and headed south towards Ancona, catching glimpses of the nearby Adriatic to our left. Somewhere between Torrete and Marotto, we left the main road, crossed under the railway,
and entered a little maze of streets which, we hoped, would take us to the beach. We did find one way to the beach, where we stopped briefly before continuing south to Marotto, continuously frustrated by a mix of one-way streets and (apparently) private beaches. Eventually we found a bit of beach where we could buy a couple of gelati, sit, and enjoy the late-afternoon sun.We took our way back inland to Il Vecchio Cantinone and made a dinner of left-overs from the previous evening before going down to our apartment to blog. Another marvellous day in Le Marche, and our sunniest by far. But tomorrow, the City That Needs No Name: Rome.
No comments:
Post a Comment