THERE is a sign in a vast old paper mill by the side of the road in Fabbriche
di Casabasciana on which is scrawled in green paint, trote vive - live
trout. You get out of the car (often in the driving rain), try not to get
flattened by the juggernauts that thunder up and down the Brennero, and ring
on a bell that is hanging off its wire under the sign.
Just as you're about to give up Ennio arrives in his three-wheeled Ape
(meaning bee; Vespa means wasp) and lets you into the warehouse with a rusty
key.
Everything inside, including large pieces of ancient and discarded furniture,
smells of damp and mildew. The echoing interior is lit by one tiny
fluorescent strip on the ceiling.
The river is diverted into the warehouse in all kinds of large and leaking
pipes and the live trout thrash around in shallow tanks, seeming to know
when Ennio is going to put his net in. He bops each one quickly on the head
and guts them with a pair of scissors, rinsing them in the torrent, popping
them in a plastic bag, weighing them on old grocer's scales and charging you
not much at all. This is Tuscany.
Because if you've ever sat under a cypress tree that twinkled with candle
lanterns, seen an apricot sunset go down beyond the medieval villages dotted
on a distant hillside, sipped your glass of chianti as the crickets started
to sing and watched as the olive groves disappeared around you in the
engulfing darkness... then you were probably staying at an English person's
house.
It's not that the villages don't exist or that the sunset isn't a lovely
colour or, indeed, that the crickets don't sing. It is, of course, possible
to hire a house in a cypress grove and sleep in a 10th-century bell tower,
eat homemade pasta every night and drink local wine until you half believe
that you are in a Bella Toscana tourist board sales video. But you will
probably be paying a fellow Brit for the fantasy.
The Tuscany I live in is wild and rugged, full of deserted villages and
strange boarded-up towns with only a café singing with fruit machines.
My house, near Bagni di Lucca, is up a one-track road through a deep chestnut
forest, and our village, in which more than half the houses are empty, is
the dead end at the top. We are at high altitude and we have violent
electric storms that cut the power, or heavy roof-leaking rain that seems to
make your bones wet.
Very often the village is in a cloud and you can hardly see your hand in front
of your face. Romantic? Definitely. But a long way from endless fields of
sunflowers and locals arguing charmingly about porcini.
There are fabulous restaurants. You can find them in any guidebook (La Mora
near Lucca, Buco di San Antonio in Lucca). They are full of Brits. The
little places you just pop into to be served wonderful food, cooked by
someone whose family have owned the restaurant since 1410, now exist only in
the fevered imaginations of the English. At the best restaurant in Bagni di
Lucca, Del Sonno, the chef is from Sheffield.
The real Tuscan diet, especially for children, involves an awful lot of chips
and Coca-Cola. From our village, Brandeglio, you can walk, in a couple of
hours, up the track and over the mountain to another village, Boveglio.
There is one restaurant in Boveglio, and on weekends flashy cars block the
narrow roads because people have come from Milan hoping for a country
experience. The restaurant - like every other restaurant in Italy - serves
crostini, quick pasta dishes and roast meat. And chips. And Coke. It's a
weird place with a tree growing through the middle of the room, and the
decor is Soviet Union 1978. The food isn't great, but the odd time warp of
the place is what you've come for.
And it is beautiful. There are cherries in spring, fireflies in June, damsons
for jam in summer and in autumn, the forest is full of people picking
mushrooms and chopping wood for the winter. There's a restaurant in
Casabasciana (Villa Aurora) where the bloke makes a pasta sauce with rose
petals from his garden and another in Vico Pancellorum (Buca di Baldabo)
where they do rabbit and hare and other wintery things. I love the craggy,
bleak Wuthering Heights remoteness of it - better than an ice-cream in a hot
market packed full of sunburnt tourists any day.
Double Shot by Anna Blundy is published by Sphere (£7.99).
Need to know
Return rail fares from London to Florence start at £114pp with Rail Europe
(0844 8484070, www.raileurope.co.uk).
True Tuscan treats
Ristorante Del Sonno (146 Viale Umberto, Bagni di Lucca, 00 39 0583 805080, www.ristorantedelsonno.it)
is the most comforting restaurant in the area and makes the best pizzas,
possibly in the whole world.
Ristorante Buca Di Baldabo' (11 Via Prati, Vico Pancellorum, 00 39 0583 89062)
is a big Soviet-style dining hall with a wild boar's head on the wall, but
it is very light in summer and the food - ancient Tuscan stuff - is
wonderful and hearty.
Villa Aurora di Franceschi Ferdiando (Localita' Corona, Fabbriche di
Casabasciana, 00 39 0583 85600): the owner makes a pasta sauce out of rose
petals from his garden, and the views across the mountains at sunset are
gorgeous.
Anna is right, Tuscany is not always a dream. I live in a small village across the Valley from Anna, I'm a Brit, and yes this area of Tuscany is not all Sunflowers and Cypress Trees; thats around Siena where the 'wealthy' Brits holiday. This area of Tuscany is for people who want a realistic life.
Paul Gerrard, Palleggio,Bagni Di Lucca, Italia
I work in one of the restaurants Anna wrote about, the Buca di Baldabò, and I can say that can be difficult to understand things people and habits if you don't spend time in this area all periods of the year. Of course everybody is invited to visit us, to test our home made food, and mostly to enjoy this strange, inusual and lovely corner of Tuscany, still out from tourist system. Sorry for my bad english, I am Italian!!!
Luisa Tolomei, Vico Pancellorum, Italy
Luisa Tolomei, Vico Pancellorum (LU), Italy
I live and work in this area and can assure you it's full of wonderful family run restaurants. Serving local food, which is still cooked in all the family homes. I fear the restaurants may be giving her what they feel she wants. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of Italian food knows that Tuscany is not the place for pizza. Pasta dishes are of course quick but sauces may have cooked for 3 hours! The local children are brought up on pasta ragù and most families have a 'orto' or vegetable patch. What a pity the writer has come here and never taken the trouble to experience and find the wonders of this region that is wet in late Autumn and early spring but wonderful and sunny in late winter, summer and early Autumn. It would help travelers to appreciate area if we had article from people with an in depth knowledge of area, cultures, and languages. If you sit in any bar and listen to the locals you will get to know what to eat at certain time of the year and where to go.
Celia Cammarota, Bagni di Lucca , Italy