The Balze, Track 51 in Piantravigne, Valdarno

Water, wind and time have formed the dreamlike landscape of the Balze: the exposed bed of a dried up Pleiocene lake and erosion through millennia have given us the stratified sand, clay and gravel sculptures we see today.  They are quite unlike any Tuscan landscape I have ever seen, and have fascinated not only the local people, who have most enchantingly called them “fairies’ pyramids” among many other names, but no less a personage than Leonardo da Vinci: scholarly debate continues as to whether the Balze inspired the landscapes in the Mona Lisa and the Virgin of the Rocks among others.

Track 51 CAI signpost, the Balze

Track 51 map, the Balze

We are on the Borro dell’Acqua Zolfina, a picturesque part of track 51, a four-hour circuit track which we picked up at Piantravigne, and this day was now bright, now moodily suffused with the light of a stormy mid-May sky.  Other than a butterfly which fluttered alongside for a couple of metres, we had all of it to ourselves.

View from Piantravigne, Tuscany, April 2011

March, and on the line from San Giovanni Valdarno to Florence, a route I have travelled a lot this year, a flash of colour along the greygreen fields clamped down against greygreen hills and a greygreen sky worried your eyes off the brow-furrowing double use of conditional and subjunctive on the dog-eared, heavily scored pages of Morante’s L’Isola di Arturo, was it, or Deledda’s L’Isola degli Spiriti, or even Calvino’s Le Città Invisibili, and you craned your neck, not quite believing another flash of blue clinging to a grey wall, or three successive bursts of yellow.

Other than these bright suspicions, cold tones gripped field and scrub, vineyard and cypress.  Metal curved dully, lines rusted in unpeopled spaces.  Weathered copper, powder green, held up the station roof; rainwater pooled on the station floor.  And yet, late March, winding through boulders and rocks, and closer to Florence, all along its broad sweep, a strange emerald centre began to blaze in the river.

April and I threw myself at anything green and physical – the track from Settignano to Fiesole, the fields around Rignano sull’Arno, familiar pine and oak woods – and eyed the light-bright countryside, like some lost magical landscape in a HG Wells short story, through a gap in the bolted gates along Costa San Giorgio, and then, in Piantravigne, during the simplest of picnics in the tall grass, we craned our necks for a taster of this most ancient of landscapes…

The Balze from Piantravigne

Riomaggiore, Cinque Terre, Italy

The first week of a sustained if wavering sun this March and we headed to the Cinque Terre, to the lucid, blade-sharp light of the Mediterranean.  Just what the doctor ordered after the haze of a long Florentine winter.  Riomaggiore I greeted with sharp intakes of breath, as much for the views of the town from the road as for the road itself – steep, narrow, winding and taken with typical speed and nonchalance by F.

Manarola, Cinque Terre

We drove on to Manarola for the choice of two towns to walk to, perhaps Corniglia, but the path being closed, Riomaggiore, and at 25 minutes on the fully-paved if graffiti-littered Via dell’Amore, by far the easier walk.  There were few people around – dilettante hikers like ourselves, locals with their backs welded to the cliff and their eyes to the water.  Benches lined the path, as did early spring flowers, and all around the deep-breath inducing openness of the sea and sky.

As at Manarola we had full run of the streets, which were boat-lined, sleepy-catted, and festooned with laundry out to dry.  After a cursory wander we sunned ourselves lizard-like on a pebble-sharp slab of rock and listened to the waves around us, sharing the space with a sharp-eyed gull and a fishing boat on the horizon.  I timed a plate of the local anchovies and glasses of the local white at A Pié de Mà exactly, and suspended over the Ligurian Sea, watched the sun sink into the water.  On the Via dell’Amore at dusk, with the first of the boats spreading its nets, most likely for anchovies, twinkling in the sea below; and as another rippled the surface of the sea in its wake; and the light striking at cliff, coast and hillside darkened, a town ahead – perhaps Vernazza – flickered its lights on in the distance.

Dusk on Via dell'Amore

From A Piè de Mà, Via dell'Amore

Fontane del Cacciucco, Piazza Santissima Annunziata

Greetings Perthlings and all manner of earthlings

September and October started the academic year and I’ve only just surfaced and found my bearings among students who are currently taxing my brain with all manner of things, from beginner’s English to exam preparation, from Aesop’s fables to Daniel Deronda to Jorge Luis Borges, even a touch of ee cummings there for a while.  Plus a little bit of travel writing, some editing, the continuing nightmare challenge of the language…  the extra precious hour of this aptly wet, grey and light-challenged All Hallow’s Eve, as well as the upcoming public holiday on 1 November as Italy celebrates all Saints’ Day, have rather a lot to do with this post.

Should you feel a hankering for stories spooky and strange, Tuscany is not least in the running to satisfy you, events having left their traces across the centuries: gruesome murders; torture chambers; burnings, hangings, bludgeonings; restless, vengeful ghosts and spirits wandering among the stone walls of castles, villas and estates, laughing, weeping, howling at the moon; of course there’s the beheaded monk on his way up to San Miniato; a Carrara marble statue that walks by the light of the full moon; and a bridge among one of many built by the devil in Italy, including one helped along by his mother (yes, his mother) in exchange for the soul of the first living being to cross it; and in most versions of the tale thwarted by the sending of pigs, dogs, cats and goats scurrying across.  I’m the type that gets spooked against my better judgement but the image of a warm, beautiful goat bleating its way across a bridge definitely takes the edge off.

But the strange aquatic being above, one of the Fontane del Cacciucco, created by Pietro Tacca in 1629, and marooned in Piazza Santissima Annunziata, is one I never tire of encountering, and is a personal symbolic favourite… but that’s another post.

A candle for All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day.

Candle, Basilica della Santissima Annunziata

Church of San Francesco, Fiesole

A quick post while the pasta’s on the boil…

This Franciscan church sits on the site of the Etruscan acropolis high up in Fiesole, and has a small museum underneath which gathers material brought back by the monks on missions around the world, particularly from China: combs, fans, statues, vases, plates, robes.  There was a room of Egyptian artifacts, a mummified cat making quite an impression on Fi and I, though here’s a less stomach churning exhibit:

Church of San Francesco museum

The climb to the church is really not all that steep, and the views are stunning, and equally so from the museum windows, where you get the added benefit of shade and a cool wind.

While Fi had a look at the archaeological park earlier on in the day, I quietly played out my version of a Fiesolean heaven: Grazia Deledda’s Canne al Vento bought from the weekend market on Piazza Mino for a euro; an apple, a sandwich, a bottle of water; a bench under some trees by the Etruscan wall; and a good two hours with the world flung aside : ).

Fantastic day, cloudcover and all, for a quickly thrown together picnic at one of my favourite places around Florence.  Fi the dynamo (really, and a touch unnerving actually if you’re a slow mover like myself) got us some roast chicken and we made good use of the excellent Sant’Ambrogio bought goodies we had in the fridge, hence: zucchini, ricotta and parmesan fritata; roasted eggplant and peppers or escalivada as I know it after a year living in Spain; chickpea and parsley salad; parmesan, gorgonzola and pecorino cheeses; plums, Tuscan bread and wine of course and these delightful blackberries Fi picked for us.

While F and I were getting lulled to sleep on the grass by the wind through the hedgerows, Fi was off picking berries, wildflowers and making ‘piggies’ from rosehip.  Not a moment’s rest.  Here she is at the deed.

Space, tranquillity and these views are reasons for returning again and again.

]]> http://bluetigers.wordpress.com/2010/09/07/picnic-at-montesenario/feed/ 0 bluetigers Picnic, Montesenario Blackberries Fi View http://bluetigers.wordpress.com/2010/09/05/on-the-run/ http://bluetigers.wordpress.com/2010/09/05/on-the-run/#comments Sun, 05 Sep 2010 10:15:56 +0000 bluetigers http://bluetigers.wordpress.com/?p=2283 ]]>

Monk and view, San Miniato al Monte

My friend Fi is visiting from Oz!  Well actually she’s been travelling The World since June and has another month before home to Fremantle, Perth, Western Australia.  Having slept like logs, we’ve only just recovered after a 6.15 am SMN pick up when I discovered that the buses were not as regular as I had expected, a two-hour nap that didn’t quite happen for me, and 6 solid hours of walking around Florence – fossicking around markets, inside piazzas, outside churches, inside churches, up hills, down hills and over rainbows.  Here she is nearly at the end of her tether at San Miniato al Monte.

And here are our poor worn feet, in really comfy sandals, after we discovered we were wearing the exact same shade of nailpolish.  Probably a Perth thing…

Driving up to Montesenario: mountains and space, a field and wildflowers, berries for the taking, sequinned owl on my hip, and F.  One just unforgettable day.

Sta Croce Basilica

Look up, though looking down also has its pleasures.

Dante, Piazza Santa Croce

Nothing quite finishes off daylight like a laurel-crowned Dante glowering down on you in the twilight.