Day 5 - Lucignano to Buonconvento

Coffees: 2, Gelati: 1, Wine: 1/4 litre

Actual Distance Travelled: 14.7km, Actual Time Taken: 3h 36m

Planned Distance: 12.8km, Planned Time: 4h

I wish I could blame the extra distance I walked on a poor map or poor route notes or somebody else's poor map reading skills but it was all me.  It is useful to follow all the instructions and not skip a step.  It also helps to check the map once in a while.

Still, on the bright side I made good time in spite of the unscheduled detour.  Today's trip was short because the original pilgrims would have gone on to the abbey at Monte Oliveto Maggiore.  However, as this is a modern pilgrimage today only goes as far as here, with tomorrow's stop being Montalcino rather than San Quirico d'Orcia.  

Montalcino is a much better fitting waypoint on my pilgrimage as it is the home of Brunello wine.  To be labelled a true Brunello the wine must be aged for at least 5 years in Slavonian oak (other oak is inferior apparently).  The very best (apparently) take 25 years to reach their peak.  They are corresponding eye wateringly expensive but are supposedly worth it.  I might not lash out on one of the gran riservas but I will definitely be trying the real deal.  On a side note, the bottle of house wine last night turned out to cost me the princely sum of 9 euro.

I have three choices for my walk tomorrow.  The first, for true via Francigena purists is to walk to the abbey and then on to Montalcino - a distance of 35km.  The second option, for the less pure (slightly grubby?) is to take a taxi to Monte Oliveto Maggiore and walk from there to Montalcino (after suitably admiring the abbey) - a distance of 23km.  The third option is to say to hell with abbeys, this is a secular pilgrimage, and head straight to Montalcino - a mere 19km.  No prizes for guessing which choice I'll be making.

Didn't meet any other hikers today either but did encounter an amusing dog.  It was a German Shepard and clearly knew its duty - growl, bark and generally frighten the life out of passersby. However, it just as clearly couldn't be arsed.  It made a noise that was as much a yawn as a growl and then made a single, very half-hearted bark.  Its duty done it closed its eyes and went back to sleep.

For some reason this whole town seemed full of cyclists when I got here.  This is obviously some common stopping point on well known cycling tours as there were at least 4 different groups - all in lycra with super muscular legs and wimpy upper bodies.   

I had lunch here in a trattoria that held a party of 6 cyclists.  I didn't realise when I sat down that one of the 6 was an American woman but soon learnt better.  I also learnt she is from New York City, is lactose intolerant, doesn't drink wine or coffee, sometimes wonders why she came to Italy for a holiday  given all this, that she is worried about the length of the journey scheduled for tomorrow, that some friends of hers played a practical joke on her last time they stayed at her place so they are now ex-friends although she did go to their wedding, and …  

At least when I drone on about the minutae of my day and I have the decency to do it on this blog so people who aren't interested the trivial details of my life can just ignore me.  She was a living example of why it is a gamble to go on a group tour.

My lunch was tagliatelle with hare sauce (they were out of wild boar) - very tasty - followed by panna cotta - bit rubbery - with forest berries (aka red currants and blackberries) and then a decent espresso which almost made up for the truly dreadful one I had at breakfast.  That one came out of a push button machine!  They should be ashamed of themselves serving such muck here.

There is some festival on in Buonconvento at the moment.  It runs for about 2 weeks. Today's entertainment was a school play by the local primary school students and a talk by an archeologist about the latest excavations in the area.  Tonight there is to be a concert by a Dire Straits cover band.  I was planning to give that a miss but unfortunately they are clearly audible from my hotel room.

Had dinner at a trattoria that is owned by the same family that owns this hotel.  I think they are better restauranteurs than hoteliers.  This is the first modern hotel I've stayed at and everything is getting a little tatty and is showing its age.  The buildings that are several hundreds of years old are holding up much better. One other annoying thing is that while the WiFi access is free, the walls are of such thick concrete you can only get a signal if you are sitting in the lobby.

As I said, better at food than hotels as dinner was (mostly) very good.  It was very much a local trattoria.  I was the only non-Italian speaker in the place and many people there were friends of the owners.  I started with an antipasto platter which had the usual 3 meats - salami, proscuitto and capocollo.  It also had 7 tiny pieces of bruschetta, each about a single mouthful. One was topped with fresh tomatoes, another with ragu, the third with pesto, the fourth with a paste of fresh porcini mushrooms, the 5th and 6th with liver paste and the 7th with some other sort of offal paste.  All very tasty.  The trick is not to ask what the ingredients are.

Unfortunately the didn't have a wild boar pasta sauce or any sort of game based sauce at all, so I finally tried true Tuscan ribollita.  Mine is better.

For main I had veal fillets with a fresh truffle sauce.  As usual the meat was overcooked and dry but it was really just a vehicle for the truffle sauce, which was divine, so it was very good.  I also had a fresh tomato salad with this. The tomatoes actually had taste! I'm getting so spoilt.  Dessert was a cake made out of fresh ground almonds bound together with egg white and sugar.  I could tell they were freshly ground as there was also a few pieces of shell in the mix.

This all cost me a total of 30 euro, including a quarter litre of house red.  I'm definitely getting spoilt.  I don't have to do any work or any housework and my all meals are cooked for me and are mostly good as well as cheap.  Coming home is going to be a nasty shock to the system.