Safe Return Doubtful

Just a few hundred metres outside the village of San Giuliano del Sannio, Francisco and his wife have bought up an old farm and turned it into a restaurant. One of the reasons that they can open almost every day is that they offer free accommodation of campervans and motorhomes, and that includes a shower and toilet, and WiFi and electric hook-up if needed. They can accommodate five, and there are very few nights, even in January, when no van is there. It works well for them. The service they offer to the vans costs them pretty much nothing, and they have customers in the restaurant. It’s a bit like the rural French ‘aire’ system that many villages have put in place, to help the village businesses.

This is the Molise region at the southern end of the Central Apennines, and has green rolling hills rather than mountains, at an altitude of about 700 metres above sea level. It generally avoids the snow that is usually present in the mountains of the Abruzzo National Park to the north.

Francisco has stables for horses also, and a few kilometres of trails in the forest. I can’t claim to have discovered this, it was a recommendation of my brother, who stayed here, and was remembered by Francisco, a few weeks ago.

Yesterday (Friday) we drove north into the Abruzzo National Park just as it seems the weather is breaking. It has been unseasonably warm and dry over the Christmas holiday. We headed for Pescasseroli, which at 1200 metres asl, is a ski resort, usually.. So far there has been no snow at all here, though some is forecast on Sunday and Monday. The town is busy still from the New Year holiday, with the schools not due back until next week. Most of the people visiting are families who have come for a week or skiing, and have had to settle for a fifteen metre square ice rink, and the coffee houses and souvenir shops.

It was Friday, and though the car park I used by the Sports centre was empty at 5 pm when I arrived, by 8 pm several motorhomes had arrived for their usual weekends away; Rome is only a couple of hours drive away.

Pleasant as it was, Pescasseroli wasn’t really my sort of place. I had hoped to get a hike in this morning, but it was a rain day, my first for a while, steady heavy rain and a temperature of about 5C. We got out for an hour, but then drive on up the spine of the Apennines, through the Abruzzo, slightly to the west of L’Aquila, to the village of Piediluco, which sits on the bank of a lake with the same name in the southeastern foothills of Umbria. It’s lower down here, at 350 meters asl, and a few degrees warmer. The rain moved away in the early afternoon, but I’m settled in for the rugby, though Roja will drag me out later in the evening and we will have a wander around the village, and perhaps investigate the pizza restaurant.