As the impending heat-wave threatens much of Great Britain with the first ever red warning issued by the Met office I cast my eyes back to past summers. Naturally all youthful summers are remembered as being glorious, especially those spent under canvas with the scout troop. I really don’t seem to remember any rain-spoilt-play days then.

The highest temperature so far recorded in the UK is 38.7 C, at Cambridge Botanic Garden on July 25, 2019.  Many of us well remember the blazing summer of 1976 when the country baked in a ten-week heat wave and faced the worst drought in 250 years.

I was then living in Lolworth, a small village off the Huntington road (A14) eight miles north of Cambridge.

 During the summer I had an open-air job assisting surveyors taking measurements for the widening of the A14. After work I would cool myself walking in the woodland beyond the village near Boxworth. On one of these walks I was joined by friends from London who had become involved with Emin, a spiritual movement based on the work of Raymond Armin, known to members as “Leo”.

I hugged my first tree as a result but little knew that the following summer would bring a greater prize to hug. And this takes me to India. Why is it that the former jewel in the crown has become such an important time-marker in my life as far as matters concerning love are concerned?

It was after a New Year’s Eve party:

that I left England during my gap year to pursue the fabled hippy trail to India and the Himalayas. Again, it was at the end of my spell at University that I took a flight to India for a long stay. It was, once more, a friend from India who I met in Lolworth some years later. But where was the matter concerning love? Connecting those life-phases with India is one essential person: Sandra, my wife.  For it was her I took to that New Year’s Eve party. And it was her I met and serenaded at university before flying to the sub-continent.

(Sandra at my digs in Kings Parade . Me playing the guitar taken on the hippy trail)

It was also my friend from Assam who brought Sandra to Lolworth where he took the first photograph of us together on the staircase of ‘Redlands’:

Could we two continue to meet by pure chance every five years and then part again for another five years? What was there that drew us back to each other? Surely this couldn’t carry on this way for ever?

(Sandra feeding a friend we rode on in Kerala)

I now realise more than ever that our fate is written in the stars. There is a level of consciousness beyond our rational understanding that acts on our behalf like a godly automatic pilot steering us on our course. We should accept that or otherwise dissolve into a futile existence. I sincerely believe there is a prime mover in these things. It is called Kismat and it’s Kismat that has united us within a cosmic road map leading towards the stars from whence we came.

And that returns me to heat-wave summers…but then, of course, a temperature of 42 degrees in Florence this coming week is not worth too much attention when compared to a pre-monsoon Delhi which can reach 50 degree. And as for the UK I just wonder how the inhabitants of those thin-walled, un-air conditioned, big-windowed dwellings will fare? Will it be a sensible reaction or will it be as the song goes ‘mad dogs and Englishmen’?

How nature shakes us up… Is there anyone left on the planet who still disbelieves in climate change I wonder?

Our cruiser reduced its sound from a firm throb to a gentle purr as we approached Gorgona’s harbour.

The island opened up to reveal its only landing point, a little cove surrounded by the multi-coloured houses of the fishermen’s village. For it was fish, especially anchovies, that once brought wealth to the island’s handful of inhabitants.

We landed in the calmest of waters. Treading pebbled steps we made our way to the village’s main building, its administrative block, before which were parked two jeeps of the island’s ‘Polizia Penitenziaria’ (penitentiary police). On a parapet above the block were frescoed words taken from the Italian constitution emphasising that humane treatment of prisoners was essential if the inmates were to be satisfactorily rehabilitated in the community. True words yes! But how many Italian prisons achieve this ideal. Sadly, the country’s penal system leaves a lot to be desired. The figures relating to prisoners’ suicides and self-harm miserably reflect this. Gorgona, however, has a praiseworthy record in this respect. Re-offenders are virtually nil.

Entering the admin block we enjoyed its coolness for the morning temperatures were rising fast. There was a bar where we bought a tasty soft focaccia made by the inmates and were surprised by the variety and quality of the vegetables they grow on the islands’ allotments now on sale in the store which also supplies other foodstuffs like pasta and olive oil.

Nearby we visited the island’s museum which houses relics from the recently discovered Roman villa. I especially liked the wall decorations.

Our trek on the island of Gorgona now began in earnest on a beautifully paved little road which wound up to the highest part of the island attaining close to a thousand feet.

Some tractors driven by the prisoners passed by us. Sandra remarked to one inmate ‘what a beautiful place you have here.’ ‘It’s fine for a day trip but not if you’re spending half your time here’, he answered.

At the cattle and chicken sheds where the prisoners keep their livestock (prisons within prisons?!) we stopped to admire the extraordinarily dramatic coastline with its ‘cale’ (creeks). The tumble of rocks descending to the pristine blue of the sea, the characteristic Mediterranean macchia and the glorious Aleppo pines with their intoxicating scent of resin above them was absolutely bewitching.

We reached an old watch-tower dating back to mediaeval times. Dramatically perched upon a high and precipitous rock, held up by an arch on which subsequent accretions of stones had been added the tower to me seemed the ultimate scene of a gothick vision of wild and desolate abandonment. What secret passages may have lurked beneath its forbidding bulk! Below the giddy heights the sea was calm but I wondered what the crash of the waves would sound like in a tempest and thought that just two hundred years ago on this day the mangled body of Percy Bysshe Shelley washed ashore on the Tuscan coast when his boat the ‘Don Juan’ was caught in a violent squall.

What was it like to live in the watchtower’ How did garrisons pass their time? How was the watch organised? How did the soldiers deal with the sightings of those dastardly Saracens always on the prowl in the salty expanse of the Mediterranean for the peninsula’s olive oil, luscious vines and fair Italian women for the Sultan’s harem.

It was beneath the cool sap-permeated branches of the firs that we had our lunch. For me it was a fontina sandwich and the now rather tepid water from the one and a half litre supply it was suggested we bring. Despite the loud clacketing of the cicadas I snatched a few minutes of shut-eye.

We passed a little cemetery in the midst of the pine forest. A domed tomb stood in the centre dedicated to a Mr Citti. We noticed that most of the tombs referred to members of the Citti family. But who were these Citti and where did they originate from?

Our lively trek guide Martina (who would from time to time enterprisingly freshen us up with a mini-shower of water from her spray dispenser) explained this to us. Gorgona had been empty of human settlers for centuries. The mediaeval hermit monks had either died or been enslaved by marauding Saracens. Yet the Grand Duke of Tuscany was interested in repopulating Gorgona and getting the island back into the folds of his dukedom. The Duke’s solution was to invite families from the village of Lugliano which is situated on a ridge in the comune of Bagni di Lucca (where we live) to settle on the island. This they did with some success. After all, although most of them had never lived by the sea the Luglianese knew about terracing steep slopes and whether these were on an island or on an Apennine made little difference.

There remains to this day the ‘princess’ of the island, Luisa, a 95 year old lady who is the last survivor of the Gorgona Cittis:

The island was turned into a penal colony by the government of the newly-united Kingdom of Italy. The fishing village remains and, to this day, there is a handful of residents who have nothing to do with the inmates of the penal colony although they may work for the establishment. However, until recently, only their relatives, were admitted to the island. We were indeed privileged to be among the few now to be allowed to come here. To come to a prison? But what a prison! The island continued to reveal its magic to us during our very special day. As Caliban says in Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’:

‘Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises, Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.’

The afternoon trek took us to perhaps the most scenographic part of the island. The Cala Maestra, an inlet flanked by stupendous cliffs on one of which a navigational lamp is sited, is Brucknerian in its power. The cliffs are some of the highest on the island cascading playfully down to meet the Mediterranean. Gulls glide along the precipices. Firs bravely hold their own against the sheer chasms and the herbs of the macchia perfume the air. The sea stretches out with infinite blueness until sky and ocean lovingly embrace each other in an iridescent oneness.

Our heads began to turn giddily when admiring this extraordinary meeting of land and sea. I cast my mind back to those equally vertiginous island cliffs we encountered on Atlantic’s St Kilda on a National Trust working holiday.

After our immersion in this symphonic natural tone-poem we began our return to Gorgona’s harbour. We passed a vineyard descending down the island’s slopes which had been most attractively laid out with the help of the famous Frescobaldi wine family from the Tuscan mainland (or ‘continente’ as it’s referred to here). The island’s vineyard was created on ferrous terrain and covers two hectares which are east-facing and protected against the winds. Vines were first planted here in 1999, and Ansonica and Vermentino varieties have always been key players in the island’s extraordinary wine. Extraordinary is also its price which reaches over Euro 500 per bottle. I wonder how much of this the prisoners get or whether they are even allowed to have a glass of it?

There was a little time left for a welcome and therapeutic swim in one of Tuscany’s most exclusive beaches – Gorgona! Luckily we avoided being stung by the jellyfish there and, suitably refreshed, boarded our little cruiser to return us to Livorno after perhaps the most special day of our Tuscan summer so far.

Today, two hundred years ago, on the 8th of July 1822, Percy Bysshe Shelley was drowned in a storm when sailing from Lerici to Pisa.

From “Adonais”

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep
He hath awakened from the dream of life
‘Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance, strike with our spirit’s knife
Invulnerable nothings. — We decay
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
Convulse us and consume us day by day,
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.

It doesn’t matter how long one has lived in an area there will always be new things to discover. Such is the case with the Bagni di Lucca walks, organised by the Fondazione Montaigne, which have re-started this month and which are continuing to prove very popular.

Last Saturday afternoon we joined a walk to the historic centre of Bagni di Lucca: Bagni alla Villa. This is where visitors would stay to take the thermal waters. Among guests seeking cures for various ailments, or just escaping from the summer heat were Montaigne, Byron and Shelley.

Some years ago we visited the elegant villa belonging to Count Burlamacchi of ancient Tuscan lineage. His villa is now managed by the most recent descendant of the family, Francesca, who has turned it into a tastefully select group boutique hotel. The butler showed us round this delectable residence:

More details about Villa Burlamacchi and how to book it may be found at:

Burlamacchi Villas

Contiguous to the Villa Burlamacchi is the Villa Chiappa where the Shelley family stayed after they reached Italy in the summer of 1818. There is so much to say about their sojourn here, much of which was summed up in a conference I attended at the English church a couple of weeks ago.

Percy would go and bathe naked in the nearby torrents, read Herodotus and translate Plato’s ‘Symposium’. Wife Mary would look after their three toddlers. The couple would go on long walks in the cool chestnut forests around and even reached the top of the bald, grassy mountain overlooking Bagni, the Prato Fiorito. (See my posts on that at: https://longoio.wordpress.com/2013/06/07/the-elysian-fields-of-prato-fiorito/)

It’s so sad to realise that the time the Shelley family spent at Bagni di Lucca was perhaps the happiest spell of their life in Italy: a life which subsequently met various tragedies: the death of two of their children, Mary’s horrific miscarriage and, most terrible of all, Percy’s death just four years later when he drowned in the bay of Lerici on July 8th 1822.  

It bodes well for the thermal establishment here, the Bagno alla Villa that it belongs to the Burlamacchi counts who intend to restore it and offer its waters and cures to a new generation. Clearly maintenance has taken place in the recent past but if one owns a set of ancient baths then one soon realises that the great spoiler of these buildings is the damp!

We headed for the Villa Webb which once belonged to a wealthy Scottish merchant from Livorno. Among his guests was Lord Byron who clearly must have found his accommodation very winning. The villa, which is quite grand, has a ground floor dedicated to the Vicaria di Val di Lima, the historical re-enactment society which has done so much to bring back pageantry and ancient pastimes to Bagni di Lucca.

Indeed, while we were there cross-bow practice was taking place with the participation of a particularly sharp-shooting young girl. (We are also joining a crossbow training cross.)

The palazzo’s first floor, or Piano Nobile, is dedicated to traditional games of chance. Bagni di Lucca was especially renowned for its fashionable casino whose income contributed much to the upkeep of the baths.  ‘Camerlano’ Virgilio Contrucci is the mastermind behind the fascinating display of gambling machines which he has reconstructed or restored. Virgilio gave us an interesting revue of the gambling machines used to milk visiting lords of their wealth. Fortunately there is no license to use the machines for such purposes today and so we were able to preserve our euros!

The top-most floor of the palazzo is called ‘the Museum of the Impossible’ and in its gloomy creepiness displays the most notorious examples of the freaky and the insane from two-headed sheep, to shrunken heads to daemons to weird unclassifiable monsters.

I thought of Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ and imagined she might have been inspired by some of the behemoths on show but, of course, Mary had already written her astonishing masterpiece before coming to Bagni di Lucca and, besides, the museum only opened about ten years ago.

The walks in and around Bagni di Lucca and the Val di Lima are conducted by young members of the Fondazione Montaigne which has set up a programme to encourage and introduce a new generation to the natural and historic wonders of our part of the world. It bodes well for the future of Bagni and tourism.

The following Sunday morning we joined in a tour of the Barsanti chalk figurine workshop on the outskirts of Bagni di Lucca Villa. In former times much of the town’s income was derived from the world wanderings of the ‘figurinai’, or plaster statuette makers. Indeed, a tall story goes that when Christopher Columbus landed in the New World the first person he met was a figurinaio selling him a souvenir statuette!

The height of the industry was in the first half of the last century when there was a proliferation of statuette makers at Bagni. Today only a small handful endures. ‘Arte Barsanti’ is one of the few remaining and, even then, is largely a one-man affair run by the enthusiastically industrious Simone who guided us around his workshop.

The atmosphere of the works is rather Dickensian and would not look out of place in any of Charles’ novels where the action takes place in a small factory or studio. I was particularly taken by the chalk dust which had settled on the cobwebs there and the steep stairs leading to the various rooms of the establishment.

In the attic of this time-warp of a building is a most beautiful presepe or christmas crib:

Simone showed us the various stages of producing ‘figurine: the casting of the plaster in moulds, the drying of the product and the painting of these beautifully detailed figures. I was pleased to note that, despite competition from the Far East and the use of plastic-based materials which enable the statuettes to resists outside climatic conditions, there is still this enchanting industry in Bagni. Founded in 1900, may the Arte Barsanti flourish for at least another hundred years!

The Arte Barsanti web site is well laid out with an English version at https://www.artebarsanti.it/en/home-eng/

All the walks are free with a donation gratefully accepted for the upkeep of the English cemetery.

Are we getting back to normal here in the Lucchesia? Of course, all this depends on what one means by the word ‘normal’. But if it’s a case of being able to take part in activities without having to show a green pass or wear a mask or, more essentially, if such activities are back in the running: activities like theatre, concerts, walking trips, festa and such like then definitely they are coming back this year with greater force than ever after two years of unimagined social and financial hardships.

More difficult to come back is the habit of looking out for events and actually attending them. So used in the past two years of being cocooned in the relative safety of one’s home and watching dvds, playing scrabble or enjoying a walk, a spot of gardening or cooking it takes a little effort to remember again to look out for events, book them and then drag oneself out to their venues.

Having said this there are some fine events lined up for the Lucchesia summer. Which ones have caught my eye and which ones shall I go to?

Here is my current selection:

Il Serchio delle Muse. This excellent classical and lyrical music festival is back minus the much missed figure of the bass singer Luigi Roni, a native of the Serchio valley, who founded it in 2002 but sadly died of Covid-19 in 2020. Maestro Roni’s last appearance had been in 2019 as Simone in Puccini’s ‘Gianni Schicchi’ in Genoa’s Teatro Carlo Felice. We shall always remember the concert he gave at the rifugio Rossi on the slopes of the Pania Della Croce. He will now forever live in celestial landscapes and, of course, in the festival he founded.

Here is the link to the full listing of the ‘Serchio delle Muse’ programme this year. I shall certainly not want to miss that Pergolesi!

Home

Another classical music festival I shall not want to miss is the one in the magical setting of the Pieve an Elici, a picturesque Romanesque church with the most stratospheric views over the Versilia coastline and the Tyrhennian Sea:

I Concerti di Pieve a Elici 2023

Closer at hand are the delightful walks around our own comune of Bagni di Lucca with visits to historic buildings and local handicraft centres all organised by the Fondazione Montaigne and conducted by the commune’s young students.

Bagni di Lucca, tornano le passeggiate estive con la Fondazione Montaigne

For music of a slightly different nature there’s the Borgo a Mozzano festival which returns after an absence of three years:

https://www.festivalborgoamozzano.it/

I think these events are something to start with for a summer which finally promises rather more social and cultural interaction after two years of ‘La Peste’ (the plague).

Breaking our worrying period of rainless weather there was a violent night of thunderstorms in the middle of this week. The skies seemed hugely angry and illuminated the penumbral landscape with manic lightning flashes. We counted the anxious seconds between hearing the thunders’ rumble and the oncoming flashes and decided it was now time to disconnect electrical equipment especially our computer and TV. When the rain came the sound of the drops on the leaves of our trees and on our lawn’s grass blades as it unleashed the clouds’ pent-up load was deliciously refreshing.

The morning descended upon us with an embracing mist obfuscating our bedroom view of the Val di Lima and a welcome sparkle permeated the landscape’s atmosphere. Our garden seemed particularly grateful for the nocturnal downpour.

Never in living memory has Italy experienced such a drought.  Even the country’s mightiest river, the Po, has turned salty well before it mouths into the Adriatic. The course just doesn’t have enough fresh water flowing into it to beat back the briny sea.

Our garden is continuing to fight a brave battle against the arid conditions. I checked it out this morning and was so glad to find our courageous plants making a welcome stand against the increasing desertification of our climate.

My thoughts went to other denizens of our martyred planet who are making an equally brave stand against man-made destruction and desertification of civilization in our European continent…