We first encountered the concept of alternative energy some years ago when we visited the Centre for Alternative Technology near Machynlleth in mid-Wales. Here one can find Europe’s steepest water-balanced cliff railway and a fascinating panoply of machines powered by wind, water and the Sun.
The Lima valley, where we have a house, has a long history of water mills. Unfortunately there are very few of them left in working order today: I can only think of one at Pieve Fosciana and another at Fabbriche di Vallico.
The stratospheric village of Lucchio in the Lima valley has its houses perilously hung on a steep cliff, almost defying the laws of gravity. Indeed, an old saying remarks that the hens of Lucchio have to wear knickers else their eggs would immediately roll down to the valley floor!
Lucchio is crowned by the ruins of its castle which was once used as an outpost defending Lucca’s frontier against its warlike neighbour Pistoia. The views from the castle are quite spectacular.
Every summer for several years there has been a very entertaining and instructive tour of Lucchio’s water mills by Graziano Serafini, a local man whose many achievements include beating the draisine world record in 2016.
What is a draisine? Better known in the UK as the hobby-horse it’s a primitive bicycle invented by Baron Karl Von Drais in 1817. Made of wood with, as yet, no pedals to turn the wheel it’s pushed along by one’s legs. Graziano Serafini broke the Guinness world record for one mile with a copy of the draisine built by him; he dedicated the event to the memory of his son Massimo, who had sadly died three years previously. The proceeds were generously donated to a children’s charity in Lucca.
Graziano Serafini is an expert on wind and water mills, particularly those of Lucchio. Passionate about industrial archeology, he has constructed a series of scale models, showing the mills’ interiors with their system of gears and stone grinders.
In the Bagni di Lucca area, the eighteen main tributaries feeding into the Lima were for long the main force in operating factories, silk factories, paper mills, and flour and chestnut mills.
I have attended Graziano’s tour of the Lucchio mills on a number of occasions but none were as striking to me as the first time I joined his mill explorations group in the summer of 2005. We delved deep into the valley floor and from the undergrowth emerged Lucchio’s ancient mills – testimonies of a time when the environment was treated with rather greater respects by people.
Here are some photographs from that tour:
Graziano also pointed out the ridge where the remains of Lucchio’s only wind-powered mill are sited:
