Val d’Orcia

When we were in Provence we enjoyed it so much that Rachel unintentionally said “We could spend a year here”! Well now we’re in Tuscany and we have that feeling once again, I know, that sounds like the lyrics from a song. The scenery is everything we hoped for and stunning hilltop villages are at nearly every turn. We are constantly reminding ourselves not to take this for granted, but we are becoming a bit blasé and holding back on taking some photos because we only rate them as nine rather ten out of ten! This really is an artist’s and photographer’s paradise.

Like Yorkshire……….. but with Sun

We set off on Thursday morning on a 50 mile drive south on, as the Beatles would put it, The Long and Winding Road. On the map it had the telltale green line along the side indicating that it was a road with beautiful scenery, we hoped it would be more of the classical Tuscan countryside with the familiar sight of cypress trees, but it was not to be. After 3 miles we entered another valley and the transformation was immediate, gone was the scenery we were so enjoying back in the Val d’Orcia, as it was replaced by Yorkshire. No disrespect to Yorkshire, but we were a little disappointed in spite of it still being lovely scenery. I suppose there were two differences from Yorkshire, historical hilltop towns and sunshine. 

Not an everyday sight in Tuscany

We continued our gentle drive south until we arrived for lunch at Pitigliano, still in Tuscany, but very close to the border with Rome’s province, Lazio. So after lunch it was a case of ‘mad dogs and Englishmen…’ as we set off on the half mile walk downhill into the historical centre of the, you guessed it, hilltop town! Every downhill step we took got us thinking that’s another uphill step back, in a temperature which was now approaching 30c, but it was definitely worth the effort/sweat!

As we head southeast tomorrow we will pinch about 30 miles of Lazio before we enter Umbria, where I suppose our blog title will be complete, but you can rest assured that we will continue blogging even after we leave not just Umbria, but Italy.