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:
This hiatus in ‘normal’ life is going to carry on for longer than we expected. Lockdown in the UK has, today, been extended for another three weeks. Unable to travel around except if the journey is strictly necessary I’ve been spending time on various household tasks which had been neglected for years. One of these is going through my photographs. It’s sometimes a joyful occupation and sometimes a sad one, especially when one considers how many loved ones are no longer with us. It is, however, always an interesting one.
One big surprise struck me when I went through my photographs from 2005, the year I purchased my house in Longoio; that is, how many places I visited for the first time, places I thought I’d only come across years later. Certainly, we did so much local sight-seeing in that landmark year.
Many photographs naturally relate to our new house and the village in which it is located. I’ve posted several of these on our local village FB pages which can be found at:
(Administered by me and aimed towards an English audience)
The main portion of the photographs, however, relate to such places as Colognora, a very attractive village in the nearby Val Pescaglia with a museum dedicated to that once staple food product, the chestnut.
Around Bagni di Lucca they show that we visited the ‘Cappella degli Alpini’, the sweet chapel dedicated to the Italian Alpini soldiers.
We had our first meal at the ‘Circolo dei Forestieri’ restaurant.
Further afield we achieved our first traverse of the ‘Ponte Sospeso’, the suspension bridge built by a factory owner to help his work force from the other side of the valley to turn up at work more quickly.
We discovered the wonderfully carved Romanesque church in the nearby village of San Cassiano:
We even managed it near the top of one of the highest Apennine passes, the Foce a Giovo. The snowfields stopped us but we were to have a second chance later in the year.
We visited so many more places in the space of just two months.
It’s really lovely to see these pictures again. They show us two as being full of enthusiasm, always keen to adventure to new places on our scooter (we didn’t have a car until 2008), and fifteen years younger.
‘Se questo è un uomo’ (if this is a man), Primo Levi’s book recounting his experiences as a prisoner at Auschwitz (he only managed to survive because his chemistry knowledge was considered useful by the Nazis in their death factory of Birkenau) describes how people placed in an impossibly horrible situation under a ruthlessly inhuman oppressor will not necessarily club together as a solidarity but egotistically fight it out among themselves for personal survival: it’s the ‘I’m all right Jack’ attitude or ‘let me snatch it from you before you snatch it from me’ policy.
I’m wondering how many of us in the present situation are pretending to be in cohesion with their local communities and how many are really on the egotistical agenda. True, the scams are coming out: dud testing equipment sold at exaggerated prices, conning knocks on the doors of houses belonging to elderly residents and so on. Fortunately, however, the trend everywhere seems to be to help others as least as much as helping oneself in the present emergency.
Nowhere is this more visible in Bagni di Lucca where voluntary organizations such as Gemma Fazzi’s Auser Filo d’Argento are busy making health masks and organizing food distribution for vulnerable families in these difficult times. Especially welcome have been the chocolate Easter eggs and Easter Colombine (dove-shaped cakes) made and distributed to children and their families by local temporarily closed bars and volunteer associations. As the Italian saying goes: “Con un piccolo grande gesto si può generare tanta felicità” : every litte bit helps.
In the UK at this present moment the big issues are the high mortality rates from Covid-19 in care homes and the continued lack of PPE supplies. The fact is that this crisis is being directed by a caretaker government in lieu of the PM being able to resume his front seat in the operations. However, in the UK, too, there has been an increased sense of community values in order to combat the very difficult situations the horrible virus has put most the world in:
A couple of days ago in the continuing days of the extraordinarily lovely weather London has been having we did our weekly shopping using a very pleasant alternative route: that along the Grand Union Canal.
London has a canal mileage at least as equal to that of Venice. Indeed , there’s a part of the canal in Paddington which is called ‘little Venice’. However, do not think you’re likely to emerge into anything like Piazza San Marco!
The government warns about doing only strictly necessary journeys. On this one we combined three highly necessary reasons: shopping for food, need for exercise and mental therapy!
Incidentally, I’m glad to note that even the Canada geese are respecting social distancing…
We are living in a world where, increasingly, less and less of what is said or written can be trusted. The term ‘fake news’ is especially banded about those who, themselves, wish to conceal or distort facts; just look at the increasing use of the BBC for government propaganda purposes and compare the way it reports on something with Channel Four news or even CNN!
We’ve had this story for a long with UK newspapers. Reading through something like the ‘Daily Express’ I have to pinch myself to realize I’m reading about the same things in the same country. Clearly this situation is being exacerbated in the current Covid-19 pandemic. Most essentially it’s statistics which lie (no new thing since as the saying -popularized by Mark Twain – goes: ‘there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics’). To limit victims of the pandemic in the UK to those who die in hospitals, for examples, and not, include those who perish from the virus outside them, in nursing homes or hostels, is shocking.
Who can we turn to to get clearer indications of what is actually happening?
Social media is certainly not the ideal place to find the truth. However, it is an excellent way of taking the temperature on certain issues which are troubling people.
Nowhere is this more evident than in our commune of Bagni di Lucca. The current junta has been slated by all sides for not sufficiently informing its citizens and residents about the current situation. In particular, it prefers not to disclose the names of persons tested positive or those who have died from the virus for reasons of privacy.
(Shooting against an unseen enemy? Bagni di Lucca’s crossbow competition in 2005)
Here is a particularly telling opinion raised by a well-considered lady, resident in the commune:
“Il Paesello’ (The little town)
… We have been left alone, a communication every now and then … never exhaustive, often not precise, sometimes quite wrong … We … the citizens who ask for information … as in the best dictatorships we are silenced. .. Today the weapon used is the insult: we are accused of ignorance, wickedness, perverse curiosity, disrespect towards the sick person… we are called plague spreaders.
The request for information was for the place where the victim is and not for the name of the unfortunate person who is fighting against the new evil and to whom we are close and for whom we pray every day.
It is the lack of information that generates fear and chaos – not vice versa.
The war that is unfolding in the media is your fault; it’s your fault if today a person infected by this cursed virus feels guilty instead and not a victim!
Apparently we have no right to basic information, we have no right to speak ..
We have to accept in silence the three words of an informal statement made every now and then only if a city council or other meeting is not scheduled that day …
We really have to envy those neighbouring town which are guided, well-informed and morally supported and where everything is done without breaking the law and without disrespecting anyone …. On the contrary …
Watching others team up … a united and strong team that is able to win …
Moral duty … appeals to those who can make an economic contribution to the emergency that will be managed by … by the absentees on duty … after they have contributed to the economic decline of the town …(half the shops had already closed down before the crisis)
Trust is earned through work …. building not destroying … opening not closing …
Even without a captain we have a strong team…
Let us thank all our voluntary associations. First of all the Red Cross, doctors, law enforcement officers, village shops, supermarkets, restaurants, pharmacies … all increasingly at our service with home deliveries
… do they also have no right to information?
Together we will make it ..
Bagni di Lucca is not going to sink like the Costa Concordia”.
As the UK situation has moved from Johnson’s advice to the nation to ‘take it on the chin’ and rely on ‘herd instinct’ to the PM being admitted into an intensive care unit under a ventilator, it’s for all of us to bury our political differences for the present time and wish him a full and speedy recovery so that he may happily see the birth of his fiancée’s new baby this year.
Meanwhile, I have frequent desires to cocoon myself as far as possible from further demoralizing news about the present UK government-exacerbated crisis. This mind-isolation can be helped by not having the wireless permanently tuned to Radio 4 but, rather, to often very palliative music of Radio 3.
Another way is to sift through one’s photographs. Sadly, my snaps taken before the digital picture explosion of this century are relatively few. Indeed, there are more photographs in one year now than there are from the whole period before 2000. I’ve mentioned my own change from analogue to digital at:
What would I give to have a few more photos of myself and my mates and girlfriends at school or university? I treasure the handful that I do have. Like this one taken on the roof of my Cambridge College’s chapel (King’s) during one of Fellow John Saltmarsh’s tours of his favorite building:
One of my rediscoveries during our present lock-down are the first photos taken in the spring of 2005 of the house we were to buy in Longoio, Bagni di Lucca when we were taken there by Luciana Gargiulo (wife of architect Francesco Rondina) of ‘Casa e Ville’, Ponte a Serraglio:
(The very first sighting of our Longoio house)
What strikes me about these ‘early’ photographs, apart from their continued novelty and freshness (we were younger then!), is how much we were able to see in the short time we had at our disposal. Some of the places I recognize well, others less so. Let’s always try to photograph road signs of where we are!
We later returned on our own to the house at Longoio. At that time (and until 2008, when we bought our first Italian car, a FIAT ‘Cinquina’), our main mode of transport was by scooter:
It’s both lovely and sad to see these photographs. Since the purchase of our Longoio house it’s clearly not been all plain sailing. To start to describe not only some of the good things but some of the bad ones that have occurred to us in Longoio would not be appropriate at this time when so many of us are suffering through no fault of our own. Let us look towards an Easter when the word ‘resurrection’ will seem to mean so much more…
It never seems to drizzle here in the Lima valley but it rains; indeed it monsoons. Two days we’ve had of almost incessant downpour and it shows in our approach roads where aqua-planing could easily be established as a sport and in normally semi-dry gullies now turned into new rivulets.
The Refubbri stream has now become a raging torrent.
The irony is that the spring where we normally obtain our water (so much preferable to the chlorinated tap water we get) is dry!
Anyway, in all our years here we’ve never seen such a deluge of precipitation from the heavens.
We are fortunate that we live in a hilly area so the waters will drain off quickly. But where? The Lucca plain must now be sodden and large chunks of it under water.
Carnivals are in full swing in Italy at this time of year and bridge the gap between Christmas and Easter festivities. If you follow my blog you’ll know that I’ve written several times about this fabulous event when children and adults join together and have fun dressing up, participating in fantastic floats and, hopefully, winning the prizes for the best display. As many of you will know the word ‘Carnevale’ means ‘farewell to meat’ for the festivity is a final fling before the forty days of Lenten fasting. In the UK, pancake day (next Tuesday 25th February) is celebrated here as Martedì Grasso (mardi gras) or ‘fat Tuesday’ – the day before Ash Wednesday.
Here are just a few posts I’ve talked about ‘Il Carnevale’ in:
Viareggio holds the biggest and best carnival in our part of the world. However, there are many minor carnivals held in local villages. On Sunday, for example, we attended Valdottavo’s ‘Carnevale’. The floats were brilliantly imaginative for such a small place and fun was truly had by all, especially the children of course!
(Photos courtesy of Alexandra Cipriani)
All these local carnivals are free and have an intimacy which the Viareggio event, although stupendous, doesn’t quite have.
This Sunday, starting at 2 pm, Fornoli will have its very own special carnival. Organised by Marco Nicoli’s wizardry and the local Mammalucco association its theme will be the Olympic Games. I wonder what the floats will reveal. As usual it’s going to be really difficult to decide on the winner and, as a member of the jury, it’s going to be a tough choice for me!
Be there if you can! The weather will be fine too….
One of the best ways of learning Italian is to watch Italian dialogue films with the help of English language sub-titles. There has been a long tradition of cinema going in Italy; television didn’t arrive until 1954 but, although the impact on cinema attendance has been considerable, it has been less drastic than in several other Europeans countries. I can still remember once-long queues outside cinemas in south London with scarlet-coated commissioners. Inside the often beautiful but faded art-deco movie theatres one was guided by usherettes with their torches. During the interval between the ‘A’ and ‘B’ movies the usherettes would appear with trays selling popcorn, Walls ice cream and Kia ora fruit juices. The back rows would be left to the domain of snoggers and courting couples while smokers would be positioned on the left side of the seating. All this is but a dim memory although South London’s Cinema museum which we visited last year brings so much of it back…and in the part of London where Charlie Chaplin was brought up. (Do read my post on this evocative museum at https://longoio3.com/2018/08/26/10670/)
In the UK many of these movie houses have regrettably been demolished while others have been converted into religious centres. (Witness the ‘New Wine Church’ on Woolwich, formerly a futuristic thirties Odeon – I still remember seeing ‘Titanic’ for the first time there). In our part of the world there are a handful of cinemas in operation although sadly here too several have been closed down. This is the case with Ghivizzano where we managed to see a Benigni film around 2007.
Cinemas still exist in Barga, Fornaci di Barga and Castelnuovo di Garfagnana but the only way of enjoying the silver screen in Bagni di Lucca is to attend the ‘Cineclub’ in the borough library on Thursdays at 9.15 PM. Bagni may have had a cinema once (I suspect it was in the Teatro Academico) but the Cineclub, now in its eleventh year, is an excellent way of making up for this deficiency.
Here is this year’s programme which runs until 12th March. In particular, the films celebrate the birth centenary of the great Fellini besides concentrating on current issues like immigration (5th March) and family relationships.
I leave you to decipher the titles of any English versions of the films. Enjoy!
Pet-friendly restaurants in our area of Mediavalle and Garfagnana are often sought out by friends and trekking partners. In such a beautiful area of walking country many like to take dogs to accompany them and, indeed, if trained properly, dogs can be invaluable in helping walkers in difficulty in often treacherous mountain paths.
There are no laws in Italy specifically banning dogs from entering restaurants; it’s very much up to the discretion of the proprietor and that’s where the problem starts. Some friends of ours, who have a very placid and intelligent dog, were welcome with her to a trattoria in the upper reaches of Palagnana only to be less than welcomed with the same animal a second time. There must be places which can assure customers a consistent welcome or their animals and, indeed, there are. On the web site www.ascadellavalle.it I have found a list of places where one can eat not only well but also be guaranteed a welcome for their pets too.
Here is a list of pet friendly places in the stretch of our Serchio valley from Bagni di Lucca to Piazza al Serchio. I should state that we do not have a dog and that we have not visited or eaten at all of them (the ones we have eaten at are underlined). I am, however, dividing them into (1) Pizzerie and (2) restaurants and trattorie that serve local delicacies:
Pizzerie:
Pizzeria
Location
Tel
La Bionda
Gallicano
0583 641355
Trovaposo
Fornaci di Barga
0583 757726
Il Buongustaio
Piano di Coreglia
0583 779346
Es Vedra
Fornoli (Bagni di Lucca)
339 491 9880
Il Nido dell ‘Aquila
Gallicano
0583 709999
Trattorie and restaurants
Osteria / Trattoria / Restaurant
Location
Specialities
Tel
Il Rondone
Fornovolasco
Typical Garfagnana cuisine
0583 722018
Il Pozzo
Pieve Fosciana
Homemade pasta, mushrooms and grilled meat
0583 666380
Giro di Boa
Barga
fish specialties and themed dinners
347 003 0700
La Pergola
Barga
fish dishes
0583 1921681
Davy’s Café
Camporgiano
land and sea dishes, themed nights
0583 600465
Al Ritrovo del Platano
Gallicano
grilled meat
0583 689922
L’Osteria
Barga
Local cuisine
335 538 7113
Quadrifoglio
Piano di Gioviano
spaghetti with seafood
0583 833254
Il Ristoro del Venturo
Castelnuovo di Garfagnana
steak (local)
0583 65605
La Bionda
Fornaci di Barga
typical cuisine, gluten-free, seafood menu
0583 75624
L’Altana
Barga
home cooking
0583 723192
Scacciaguai
Barga
truffle specialties
0583 711368
Da Sandra
Fabbriche di Vallico
homemade tordelli
0583 761712
Al Romanzo
Barga
steaks
328 574 772
Il Flamingo
Ponte all’Ania
grilled fish and meat specialties
0583 730326
Al Barchetto
Turrite Cava (Gallicano)
fish specialties
0583 75495
Robur Bar
Cardoso (Gallicano)
fish menu
347 143 5758
Elisa
Barga
Local specialities
0583 572502
I am quite sure that our cats would enjoy the fayre at several of these eateries. Becoming ever more popular in the world are cat cafes where customers can release the day’s stress by drinking a cappuccino with a tabby cuddled on their lap. There are none of these around our area although there are several bars with friendly cats prowling around unofficially. There is, however, a web site at https://thefashionplatemag.com/how-to-shop-sustainably/milan/for-pet-lovers-cat-cafes-in-italy/ which lists some popular cat cafes in towns like Turin, Milan and Rome.
I have not found any places where such animals as crocodiles are welcome (maybe because they’ve gobbled up most of their customers) although I look forwards to those where pet pigs and lamas are at home. Nevertheless I would certainly avoid those eateries that welcome blue-bottles and wasps in their precincts!
The intensity of the split between those British citizens who still wish to remain within the European Community and those who are gladly leaving it will, in my opinion (despite a so-called ‘democratic referendum which actually showed that the majority wanted to remain) only increase in its force after this January 31st 2020.
There can be no wait for another general election: the referendum result – although it was merely advisory and although no legitimate quorum was allowed – is speciously moulded in stone; indeed sculpted in Carrara marble for that stalwart band of brits (some even resident in Italy (!!!)) who gladly leave a club from which they felt they never got free drinks, or even any nibbles, a referendum ‘result’ which is truly cast in already rotting concrete mocking all those who care for a Europe that has the integrity and force to stand up and be counted before the mega-economies of China and the US of A.
I can only be grateful that I have chosen to become a member of the European community as my area to live, work and love in and never relinquish my European citizenships. I don’t think I would psychologically last very long in the burgeoning eruption of false economic, trade and social promises which an utterly dishonest quasi-totalitarian police-state regime (labelled ‘airstrip one’ in 1984) is now foisting on an island which our greatest poet once described as ‘This other Eden, demi-paradise’.
Don’t forget Brexit has not been done today …it has barely begun! The worse is yet to come…it will NEVER be done.
The really awful thing is that the leavers are ever more believers in the fatuous righteousness of their decision (just like the cult members of Guiana’s Jonesville – remember that one?) while the remainers are now taking shelter either by leaving the country or by seeking pockets of sanity (like my city of birth and breeding, London).
I am reminded of the harsh criticism in a sonnet by a poet who really cared for his country, William Wordsworth:
England … is become a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life’s common way,
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.
Meanwhile, leavers do enjoy yourselves this Friday night at 11pm!
After forty seven years in which the UK has been lifted from the doldrums of British Leyland-style strikes, power cuts and much else that was grey and loathsome and embraced almost half a century of increasingly successful membership, the sceptered isle leaves the European Union.
You injudicious Brexiteers enjoy your party in college green! There will be fireworks, Big Ben bonging and a rousing address from your beloved leader (sorry….our prime minister). Wonderful speeches are promised by stars like Ann Widdecombe, Tim Martin and Julia Hartley-Brewer all bathed in the Uk’s traditionally forecast drizzle.
As George Orwell wrote in his essay ‘England your England’ (note no ‘Scotland’, ‘Wales’ or ‘Ireland’) – an essay which still has immense value especially that part centred around the word ‘hypocrisy’, especially aptly featured in those brexiteers who have become residents in Italy and deluding themselves of having their cake and eating it.
“…as Europeans go, the English are not intellectual. They have a horror of abstract thought, they feel no need for any philosophy or systematic ‘world-view’. Nor is this because they are ‘practical’, as they are so fond of claiming for themselves. One has only to look at their methods of town planning and water supply, their obstinate clinging to everything that is out of date and a nuisance, a spelling system that defies analysis, and a system of weights and measures that is intelligible only to the compilers of arithmetic books, to see how little they care about mere efficiency. But they have a certain power of acting without taking thought. Their world-famed hypocrisy – their double-faced attitude towards the Empire, for instance – is bound up with this. Also, in moments of supreme crisis the whole nation can suddenly draw together and act upon a species of instinct, really a code of conduct which is understood by almost everyone, though never formulated. The phrase that Hitler coined for the Germans, ‘a sleep-walking people’, would have been better applied to the English. Not that there is anything to be proud of in being called a sleep-walker.”
That ‘nation of sleep-walkers’ sums it up quite brilliantly. Will you accept one of those newly minted ‘celebration’ fifty pence pieces? Will you sleep walk off the white cliffs?
Happily if I ever return to my birthplace, it will be to the inimitable, cosmopolitan and glorious metropolis of London, the city that has given shelter and hospitality to the world’s greatest defenders of freedom (Mazzini from Italy, Ho Chi Min from Vietnam and Marx from Russia just to name three). I would, in my dreams, make London into a free city, Hanseatic league style: a city that stands apart from that crass diminutive mentality so aptly described by Orwell; a city that on a genuine day of sunshine rises proudly astride the great river Thames. As Joseph Conrad (another foreigner, this time from Poland, made welcome by the great Wen) wrote:
What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men and the seed of commonwealths.
I return to Wordsworth who, on Westminster Bridge, wrote:
Earth has not any thing to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!
This end of January is truly a day of dark foreboding but we believers in the Community of Europe will never give up, never surrender that which is God-given, the beating heart and unity of one of the world’s great continents. Long live the European Community!
