Friday, 25 May 2012 - Travelling Val d'Orcia

While planning this trip I spent some time looking at the Slow Travel website (www.slowtrav.com).  I liked their ideas on how to have a holiday.  One of the items I found on there was a description of a day trip around the Val d'Orcia (www.slowtrav.com/italy/tuscany/sd_driving_tuscany.htm).  This is the area in Tuscany, including Montepulciano, where many of the postcard pictures of Tuscany come from.  I had printed out the route as described but we knew it was going to be tricky coordinating these notes and Tom Tom.  But we were confident enough to give it a crack.  What could possibly go wrong?  As it turned out nothing went wrong and we had a great trip - did about two thirds of the notes.

We visited Pienza - picturesque, and as it was still early (9ish) we missed the tourists - yay.  We had time for a leisurely walk, the mandatory church visit, and the traditional caffe latte and pastry.  Just as we finished that the tour buses turned up full of middle-aged, loud, ladies pulling suitcases.  Must have been their day in Pienza.

Pienza, sans the tourist hordes

Next stop was Montalcino, similar to 'our' town.  We met up with the travelling market here and bought some stuff we didn't see the day before.  Gave the churches a miss.... because our next stop was the Abbey of Sant'Antimo.  Another really old place - this wasn't the first religious building here and this one was started in 1118!  Being a monastery it wasn't as ornate as the churches we had seen, but it was amazingly beautiful and spiritual.

Abbey of Sant'Antimo
After this we started making our way back. It gets a bit hazy here but I think we drove through or near Montichiello as well. We went through the very rural village of San Quirico.  As we departed there we drove down a hill on a narrow windy road past a bridge with a large memorial to Tazio Nuvolari.  I had one of those double-take moments.  I would have loved to stop but it was single lane stuff and nowhere to park.  My reading (just now) of a Google-translated Italian website says that this stretch of road was part of the Mille Miglia course (very famous race between Brescia and Roma, on public roads, from the 1920s to the 1950s) and is still the same now as it was then.  The monument was erected not long ago.  So now I can imagine Tazio screaming down this same road in his red Alfa Romeo on the way to victory in the Mille Miglia.  So now I can brag that I have driven part of the Mille Miglia course (I won't mention what in).

The real star of this trip was the countryside and we stopped a few times to take a look and take pictures.  This is Tuscany and it's what we came to see.

We made it back fine.  I think we had pizza for tea from a shop up the road - and more of that cheap red wine.  We went in a couple of times and the guy took our orders - he spoke English - but the lady making the pizzas with the wood fired oven spoke no English - but we had fun choosing extra toppings and whether we wanted it cut or not.  She remembered us a couple of days later when we had them again.

Tricia said:

Spent most of the day driving in the country around Montepulciano.  Arrived home about 4pm.  Dinner at villa.