Day 9 - Pescina to Piancastagnaio

Coffees: 2, Gelati: 0, Wine: 0

Actual Distance Walked: 26km, Actual Time Taken: 8h 9m

Planned Distance: 24km, Planned Time: 7h

Today turned out to be harder than I expected.  First of all the cute little elevation map at the start of my route notes lied.  It wasn't all downhill at all.  In fact, overall I ascended 1061m but descended only 961m.  I count that as climbing myself.

Also the vast majority of the way was on forest tracks along the northern and eastern edges of Monte Amiata, which is an extinct volcano.  The forest was quite lovely, full of pine trees, chestnuts and a tree I chose to call beech.  It was pleasantly cool in the shade.  The downside is one forest track looks much like another.  Moreover, an eroded forest track looks a lot like a gully or a dry stream bed.  None of this is helped by the fact that sometimes the route was down a gully or stream bed.  The forest is a nature reserve and is criss-crossed by hiking trails.  Most of the time my route followed waymarked trails.  Unfortunately, a couple of times it took shortcuts down unmarked tracks (see previous comment on how much one track looks like another to see why this is unfortunate).  I managed to get horribly lost once and slightly lost another time.  A large reason for the extra hour on my trip time was me spent peering over the map on my GPS trying to figure out where I was and how to get to the next landmark after I went off route.  Grumble.

The morning was spent entirely back to nature.  I didn't encounter another person at all.  I did catch a glimpse of a wild boar (one not on my plate for a change) and also a deer (why is there never venison on the menu?).  I also surprised several pheasants (some sort of game bird at least) out of the scrub.  Perhaps there is a reason for all the hopeful hunters I see.

The afternoon was quite different.  Still on the slopes of the mountain but more people out walking the trails.  The most amusing was a teenage couple in one of those funny little 3 wheeled trucks headed for a picnic spot and some privacy.  When they passed me on a particularly steep piece of trail I was sure the truck was going to lose traction and roll back on me.  However, the hairdryer made it to the top - but the girl's schoolbag fell out.  I approached them when I caught up to them at the picnic spot.  They were initially very much taken aback by this but eventually with my broken Italian and their broken English I was able to explain about the bag and where it was.  She hadn't even noticed it had gone.

I didn't like the hotel for tonight at all.  It is a modern place on the outskirts of town.  I was so tired with all the mucking about I did today and worried about tomorrow (31km!) that I never got a chance to walk the extra 2km into the medieval town centre to do any sightseeing (and gelati buying).

My room was enormous.  It had quite a bit of furniture in it but felt quite stark since it was so large.  The crucifix over the doorway was an odd touch.  It felt more like a school dormitory than a hotel room.  I could see 6 grubby English schoolboys fitting right in.  On the plus side it had bath rather than just a shower.

The owners here speak *no* English, not even a little to handle lost tourists.  It might have WiFi but I wasn't up to the task of asking about it.

I did have to leave the hotel twice, even though all I wanted to do was rest.  Tomorrow is Sunday and  nothing in the village is open and I don't pass any villages on my route tomorrow until the very end so I needed to buy picnic supplies today.  It had to be something that wouldn't go stale or go off.  There was a supermarket near the hotel luckily so I ended up stocking up on crackers, cheese and fruit and plenty of mineral water since there are no taps along the way tomorrow either.  My lunch today, as supplied by last night's hotel, was a (slightly stale) roll with a omelette filling, a kiwi fruit, a nectarine and an apple.  All tasty but I could have eaten twice as much easily.  

I lugged all my picnic supplies back to the hotel and then went out in search of dinner.  There was a cheap and cheerful suburban trattoria not far away.  It is the kind of place you go to if you live locally and can't be bothered cooking.  You certainly wouldn't make a point of driving to go to it.  To start with I had mixed crostini - 1 with fresh tomato (good) and 3 with cheese and different types of salami (not so good as the cheese was tasteless).  My primo was fettuccine with a porcini mushroom sauce.  The sauce was a surprise as it wasn't the usually creamy type.  Instead, it had fresh tomato, the mushrooms, parsley and plenty of garlic.  This was very tasty.  My main was veal scaloppine with a mushroom and white wine sauce.  Dad's butcher would never had dared sell him meat as tough as that, but it all tasted ok.  I finished with a coffee as all the desserts were prepackaged, bulk purchased items.  The coffee was very strange.  It was so very rich it almost tasted like chocolate.  I didn't have any wine as they only sold house wine by the full bottle.  

Not my best day gastronomically speaking.  No gelati!