I’m a lover of valley hopping: going from one valley to another over a steep road, whether by car or taking to footpaths.
We were recently in Massarosa and decided to get to the Val Freddana on a steep road which passes by the beautiful Pieve a Elici. We’d been at the Pieve recently for a fabulous concert (see https://longoio3.com/2017/08/06/a-wonderful-place-to-experience-the-end-of-time/). This time we took in a visit to the idyllic hamlet of Luciano.

This place, which you miss if you blink, was founded by a roman legionary called Lucianum on land given to him when he retired from imperial service. In the nineteenth century it became the hide-away place for several important figures in Italian cultural history: poet Carducci, Pellegrini, patriot Luigi Carlo Farina and artist Michele Marcucci, whose works embellish several churches in the Lucchesia: Colle di Compito and Pieve di Elici itself.
It’s a delightful hamlet and is luckily being restored and brought back to life by its handful of inhabitants.

Going north from Luciano one descends into the Val Freddana and the main road to Camaiore, but not before turning left into one of the most scenic drives in the whole of the Apuane. The road takes one over the passo Lucese into the Val Pedogna which is familiar to us who live here as the valley that leads through Piegaio to Diecimo.

At this stage in our peregrination we’d become somewhat peckish and stopped at an eating–place I hadn’t visited for ages. The ‘Bar Ristorante Lucese’. It was a truly welcome stop!

The restaurant is famed for its Cinghiale (wild boar) but all its cooking is to a very high standard. Furthermore, it’s still a place which serves one with dishes from which one can take for oneself the quantity one actually wants to eat. Other restaurants give you your meal on an individual plate with no hope of being able to divide and share it among your dinner table friends.

We chose maccheroni al Cinghiale, Cinghiale itself and fried vegetables. Everything was cooked to a perfect T. The Cinghiale melted in one’s mouth – it was the tastiest we’d eaten for a very long time. We also didn’t feel guilty about eating meat as there is a plague of Cinghiale in Tuscany destroying crops and they need to be culled. What better way to recycle them than in one’s stomach!
The fried vegetables were cooked in the lightest pastella and were especially moreish.

The bill was true value for money and did not include those increasingly added extras like cover and service.
The ambience was typical of a characteristic mountain restaurant and the hosts were friendly. We could not have wished for more!

There’s an FB page on the ristorante at

https://www.facebook.com/ristorantelucese/

We then climbed down the Lucese passo passing the Galgani iron works. Unfortunately Mr Galgani wasn’t there but we have already visited his amazing relic of early industrial archaeology. (See my post at https://longoio.wordpress.com/2013/10/24/back-to-the-iron-age/ )

Thence it was an easy ride down the Val Pedogna to meet the hallucinating busy main road up the Serchio and thence home after a perfect day whose main object (need I remind myself) was to attend that early morning medical appointment at Massarosa.