Same Shirt, Different day-2012 Adventures of the "Devonport Wonder Babes"

Sunday 2^nd September -Monday 3rd September Radda in Chianti  to santa Eufemia in Piedmonte

Still no water as Enrico unable to fix it in the dark last night, so further trips to swimming pool with bucket were needed and Valentina arrived in our room with 2 large bottles of water and bottle of wine.

 

 

Got car packed up and ready to leave for journey up to Piedemonte by about 8.30 am.

Stopped halfway down the driveway to have a look at the Tower (Torre) which is a self-contained apartment about 100 metres away from the main house with a nice view over the pond and across to the village.

 

 

It has a kitchen living room on ground floor, and up a spiral staircase a bedroom and bathroom on first level and then a second bedroom on 2^nd level so it can sleep 5 persons.

 

Tried to set our GPS to go out to the coast to head north by smaller roads rather than by motorway, but it was not very cooperative and we ended up doing some basic map and road signs navigation through Castellina, Poggibonsi and Volterra almost to Cacina where we finally had to go on to the motorway and take the ticket to get through the toll booth.

Then pretty straightforward cruise up the motorway ( between 110-130 km/hr) with some music playing, today Leonard Cohen and Gillian Welch. Past Livorno, past Pisa with glimpse of Leaning Tower, past the Carrera mountains and the dozens of yards full of huge slabs and chunks of marble, ranging in colour from pure glistening white through to all shades of cream and brown. Each yard had a large crane system to move the stone around. The quarries that the marble has come from are visible from many km away.  Then passed inland of the Cinque Terre villages and on through and around Genova with glimpses of the port and sea. From there we headed inland towards Alessandria, turned west around outskirts of Asti and south towards Alba.

Then had a bit of a navigational problem as I sent us off the motorway at northern end of SP3 instead of southern end but Google maps on iPad came to the rescue and the little blue dot carried us through the winding roads of the countryside, through Alba ( bit of difficulty here because main Piazza blocked off to cars) and arrived at Santa Eufemia Agritourismo about 7 pm to lovely welcome from our hosts Ciara and Paolo.

 

This is a house with vineyards in front stretching down the valley and their hazel nut orchard across the road. They have accommodation for more than 8 people here and we are in the downstairs room has disability access is fitted out for wheelchairs, so was very welcome sight for us as we have been up and down staircases a lot in past couple of weeks.

 

Next morning it was rainy and misty again !!

 

 

 

 

Our hosts here are Ciara and Paolo who join everyone for breakfast and are incredibly hardworking and helpful people.One morning Ciara made a birthday cake for Jugen one of the other guests.

Ciara with birthday cake

Paolo

 Other in the household are Ciara's parents, Giussepe and Rosa, plus 2 dogs who eat hazel nuts and  come walking with anyone going anywhere on property or up the road and numerous cats.

Masca

 

 

Masca eating hazel nuts 

 

 In the dining area, above their wine tasting room in converted barn there is a large table and all kitchen equipment so we can prepare meals other than breakfast which is very good for us . Quite a bit of wine get drunk here in the evenings also with lots of conversation.

 

The covered area for drying the hazel nuts is on first level verandah just outside the dining area and currently has about 2/3 of the season’s crop drying there. Because it has been raining here they haven’t been able to harvest the rest of the crop. This is done using a machine like a road sweeper to sweep the nuts from the ground under the trees which is kept clear of vegetation. Then they go through some water bath sorting process and are dried and turned. Most of their hazelnuts go to Ferrer Roche to go into chocolate, not for Nutella which is made from cheaper hazel nuts from Turkey.

 

They make their own wine from their own vines on the property and the vendage is due to begin next week provided it stops raining and they can complete the hazel nuts before the grapes. Interesting way in which the vines are trained in Italy with bunches of grapes hanging right at the bottom. All the grapes are picked by hand. In the breakfast room they have bottles of their own wine that we can buy for €4-6 which of course I have taken advantage of.       

Our fellow guests are 2 German couples and a younger couple from the Netherlands and the lineup of cars in the courtyard is Audi, Volvo, Citroen and Renault. One couple has holidayed here 5 times.