Getting away from it …

We needed a break after a difficult summer. “A change is as good as a rest,” they say, so we decided to return to a favourite destination two days ago: beautiful Abruzzo in the south of Italy, two hours’ drive from Rome.

It’s a change, but not totally. The area where we are staying for the second time is a special village: Santo Stefano di Sessanio, very near the stunning Gran Sasso d’Italia, a mountainous range that soars to over 9,550 feet (2,912 metres). The highest mountain in Great Britain is Ben Nevis (4,411 feet or 1,345 metres). So you can imagine how stunning the views can be when the skies are clear.

We are attempting Monte Aquila tomorrow on foot – approximately 2,494 metres – over 8,000 feet. Even the lowest part of the plateau we shall start from is 1,460 metres. We will visit Campo Imperatore where Mussolini was imprisoned for about two weeks, before being rescued by German paratroopers. (Ten gliders were involved).

STOP PRESS: the weather was too bad, and bizarrely, the road was blocked anyway for a while by a BBC team, filming for Top Gear. We had to pull over in our shabby estate car to watch a £2,000,000 latest model Ferrari race up and down beneath the mountain range. Mad world. When we eventually reached the peak, fog obliterated the view and Mussolini’s prison looked very dismal. Which is probably what Badoglio wanted and King Vittorio Emanuele III all those years ago on the night of 25th July 1943, when he was arrested and eventually banished (after several moves) to this hotel one month later.

The hotel where Mussolini was imprisoned in August 1943 (fittingly dishevelled imo)

I digress. I said this area is not completely a change for us. And similarly, where we live in unspoilt Tuscany, there was much poverty, as there was (and arguably, still is) in Abruzzo. We hear and read about the same fortitude of the peasants in both places: their struggles with the harsh terrain and the inevitable immigration to far-flung places: Germany, North America, to mention a few. We are staying in an albergo diffuso. How to translate? Basically, many of the simple houses of the village have been converted to self-catering apartments and many are furnished with furniture and mementoes of past rural life and administered by a reception elsewhere in the village. A scattered hotel???

Proof of the persistence and strength of character of the local people is the way that some have managed to hang on to their homes in this village, despite the terrible earthquake of 2009.  This innovative idea of the albergo diffuso, is why we can enjoy sleeping in a house hewn from the rocks with views to die for over the mountains and eat local dishes from the past in the couple of restaurants opened.

The village is surrounded by spectacular mountains and pastures and the difficult terrain is apparent. How they managed to farm such rocky land is mind boggling. On our walk today, we picked up a bone lying in the flower-studded grass. White Abruzzesi guard dogs, watching over their sheep and cattle, barked at us as we approached over the meadows: a reminder that wolves are about. Piles of stones heaped up (macere) showed how arid the ground is, strips of farmed fields reminded us of the campi aperti – reminded us of a system where each member of the community should be allowed to own at least a part of the land – a system dating back to the Middle Ages. The mountain folk here (i montanari) have the same indomitable spirit as our Tuscan montanari. They don’t give up.

A picture on the wall of the family’s grandparents in their wedding clothes of the 1930s looks down on us. When we asked the present owner what his grandparents would have thought of people from England staying in their home, he replied: ‘I would probably have my ears boxed by them, but the alternative would be for these buildings to crumble into piles of stones.’

(The above photos show simple cave dwellings that villagers used for their animals and even lived in themselves)

We saw the devastation of the earthquake for ourselves.  Driving along the plain to search for petrol, we spied a mediaeval castle perched on the mountainside, a huddle of houses a few metres below. The ubiquitous cranes dotted about showed yet another victim of earthquake disasters. But we love exploring and so we diverted up the hill. The castle was inaccessible, so we wandered round the semi-deserted town of San Pio delle Camere. A ghost town, with doors giving on to rooms of rubble, where beams had fallen in. It was eerie. What does it take for a town to resurrect itself? (Apart from government aid – which is spread thin). A certain spirit is needed. There were builders working on a few of the ruins but most of the houses had been abandoned.

I enjoyed reading a pamphlet written by the now deceased uncle of our particular house owner. Before he died (and before he could finish writing), he decided to tell stories of Santo Stefano di Sessanio. Thanks to people like him, memories become more than anecdotes, traditions can be revived, recipes from the past cooked again, songs sung in the piazza, children’s games played once again, old songs performed in the local osteria.

We shall visit another couple of villages tomorrow, on our way to Bisenti and the writing retreat where I have been invited to talk.

I’ll report back. In the meantime, here is a collage of photos I took today. Hope you enjoy looking at them.

I loved coming across the shepherd’s refuge when we walked along the dry riverbed, fire laid, his sheep on the bank opposite. And, the free library in another village we explored. Interesting how it was named in English.

I hope I haven’t gone on for too long. It’s a long time since I wrote up my blog. A dopo! See you later.

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