The original plan for this leg of my ramble called for walking every day until Friday, when I would finish in Montefiascone. That plan was, let us be candid, ambitious. Monday: Castelnuovo dell’Abate to Castiglione d’Orcia, 11.5 miles. Tuesday: Castiglione d’Orcia to Radicofani, 16.8 miles. Wednesday: Radicofani to Proceno, 16.4 miles. Thursday: Proceno to Bolsena, 18.8 miles. Friday: Bolsena to Montefiascone, 11 miles.

I decided to scale back drastically and take a few days with little or no hiking. I arranged to ride with my luggage Monday through today, Wednesday. Tomorrow, I have a scheme for riding a bus half the way and walking the last 9 or 10 miles to Bolsena. So, these three days have been about getting somewhere fast, lounging around reading and napping, then eating. In short, they’ve been a vacation. I am compressing them into one entry, with ample slide shows. Trust me, the food is the best part.

Monday started off auspiciously at the vineyard/agriturismo, where, to my surprise and delight, my breakfast was served with a glass of the house wine. Because of course.

If you’ve never had a breakfast of cured meats, good hard cheese (was it a parmigiano?), and cherry tomatoes on toast with a glass of wine, you haven’t lived.

After some idle time, my ride showed up, and after snaking down and up and down ad up the roads of hilly southern Tuscany, we arrived at Castiglione d’Orcia, where, to the driver’s surprise, a street fair was blocking the way to my accommodation.

She pointed up the block and indicated that it was just a bit up the hill and to the left. For once, this turned out to be true. My B&B hostess was as nice as could be, given that I arrived while she was still vacuuming and hadn’t had a chance to ready the room (reasonable, given that it was something like 9:45am). I said I would leave my bags and explore town, which I think was a relief to her.

Castiglione and Rocce d’Orcia, tiny twins. are dominated by two prominent ruins of fortresses. And it was street fair day, so I got to browse the various tent-stands full of clothes and toys and whatnot, and ogle several meat and cheese vans that really tempted me.

As I noted, there are two ruins, and I decided to start with the one further away from my lodging, the Rocca di Tentennano. It’s the smaller, but dramatic in its isolation. And, big darn surprise, it involves an inordinate amount of climbing the hill to get to it, followed by alarmingly steep staircases once you get inside.

In that fourth photo in the slideshow, you can see the other ruin, Rocca Aldobrandesca, in the distance, across town and near my B&B. After descending those internal stairs sideways with hands clutching at the rails, and then descending the hill and heading back toward the Rocca Aldobrandesca, I saw that it would require even more climbing to get more pictures from the top of things, so I decided instead to buy a Coke and sit on a bench among the street fair and watch the world go by. The rest of the day was an uneventful blur of reading and napping, until my 7:30 dinner reservation, which the hostess had kindly made for me. I don’t know if the reservation was absolutely necessary, but I will say that in the course of my dinner, this tiny restaurant went from me alone to 20-some people at ten tables, all deftly handled by one waiter and one or possibly two people in the kitchen. It was impressive. And so was the chicken liver served with toast. The livers were not in the dense pate form I expected; more like oatmeal in consistency, but delicious. And the exquisitely fat spaghetti with bacon and leeks truly tasted fully and richly like leaks.

A good end to a quiet day.

Tuesday’s accommodation had me curious for two reasons. First, it was, based on the description, a more upscale Azienda Agriturismo, a place with not just a pool but a sauna and options to schedule horse-riding and other activities. Second, the map indicated that it was set a good two and a half miles from Radicofani, so I knew that I would be having whatever dinner they were serving. I’d read a few reviews, on travel sites, and it sounded like the meal would be elaborate. That can be a bit awkward if you are dining alone, but hey I’m taking what comes my way this week.

La Selvella lives up to its description. It’s gorgeous, and the staff is pleasant in that way that you get at places that sell their own branded soap.

While being checked in, I met an Australian woman and we got chatting. She saw my branded luggage tags from Mac’s Adventure, and it turns out she is part of a group of ten people also using the company. They are old friends mostly from Australia but with two Brits and someone living in the Netherlands as well. Some are walking, some are just riding from stop to stop with the luggage and then touring the towns. They have another week of this, going all the way to Rome, where they will spend a few days. I knew I would see her and her whole crew at dinner, since we would all be dining in the courtyard.

Once again,with a day to kill, I decided to walk to town. This was a bold choice, since Radicofani, visible in the distance, is rather emphatically uphill, but what the heck. Five miles, knowing that the second half would be downhill? Sign me up. On the way up, I was following the paved road and somehow missed the turnoff to where the Via Francigena takes a dirt and gravel path, so my way up was probably hotter and harder than it had to be (the pavement really reflects the heat!). The town was small, and, having left my pack at the hotel, I bought a liter of water and drank it all before turning around and heading back down. I will here confess that Radicofani, as you can see, has a fortress with a tower you can pay a small fee to enter and climb. When I was in the town and saw the extra fifty or sixty meters of climbing, I thought, ‘screw it, I know what this countryside looks like from a height.

Another afternoon of reading and napping. Lovely.

Dinner was a delight. The courses were small without being stingy, and it was fun having a table of English-speakers nearby (the guests at La Selvella also included a French couple, two Italian couples, and a mysterious couple who were so quiet and seated far enough away from me that I never did catch what language they were speaking.) Just hearing ten old friends at a long table sharing oohs and aahs over food and ribbing each other with well-worn jokes based on years of knowing each other was somehow very soothing and entertaining. Yes, that antipasti plate includes fried zucchini blossoms and fried zucchini fresh from the garden, fresh mushrooms and fresh tomatoes on crostini, and homemade cured meats. Yes, the spaghetti was made this afternoon. Yes, that is pork served with a rich porky sauce and a small salad. And yes, that is homemade ice cream so rich that as it melted it became like scooping up whipped cream.

Carried along on the mood of the evening, I ended with limoncello, which came served in its own little bottle that had been kept in the freezer.

As I got up to make my way back to my room, the waiter was bringing out a bottle to another table, and as I passed, he stopped me to ask if I didn’t want to try their homemade grappa, in that slightly urging tone waiters can pull that is hard to resist. Two glasses of wine and a healthy portion of limoncello in, I declined with a big gesture of ‘that would be too much!’ which got a laugh from the Italian couple who were about to get a taste of that grappa. Based on my muddy head when I awoke in the middle of the night needing a glass of water, I made the right choice.

Today, Wednesday, started with scrambled eggs and bacon, the first time that has even been a possibility in Italy. I loved it. My car, a small station wagon, arrived and there was some concerned phone calling and extensive discussion between the driver and the woman managing La Selvella. All of the Ausstralians’ bags, a huge mass of big roller bags, were waiting, and I knew that at least two of them were getting a lift somewhere today, so I worried that there had been some mix up. Ultimately, the driver took me and my bag and backpack and left everything else. I hoped for the best for everyone else. Off we go through lots of countryside to get to Proceno, which I know from my reading is another very small town– one tobacconist/convenience store, two or maybe three restaurants, a post office and a bank. Lots of houses, but clearly everyone drives to the larger nearby town of Acquapendente for any kind of shopping.

My lodging at the Castello di Proceno is another maze of interlinked buildings, with at least three entrances and, so far as I can figure, build into the fortifications of the old castle that looms above. The room has a kitchenette and is about half the size of my entire apartment.

After settling into my room for a while, I went out to see the town, and on my way back, I ran into two of the Australian women walking with an American woman they had, I guessed, just met through checking in. Turns out, of course, that they are staying in the same town, same hotel, and that a separate van had been planned to carry their bags. The two women riding with the bags had to squeeze in across the front seat with the driver, but they’d made it. Some of their party are walking today, but had worked out a deal to only hike part of that long 16.4 miles and get picked up by a car. I should have thought of that! Oh well. Tomorrow I will do my bus-and-walk trick, which feels like more of an adventure to me.

Dinner had me surrounded by English speakers; in addition to the ten mostly Australians (I think the ones who live in England are originally Australian, just based on eavesdropping on accents), there was a table of six who all spoke English, and the American from earlier in the day and her husband. And again, it was comforting to be surrounded by the buzz of voices from which I could pick out words and snippets of conversation.

The dinner itself was yet again amazing. A little plate of nibblies to get you started, and then I had smoked tuna carpaccio, which came with a beautifully dressed salad. I followed up with spinach and ricotta ravioli with truffle sauce, parmigiano shavings and lardo di Colonatta, which is cured pork fat. And I finished off with chocolate mousse (in this interpretation, more frozen than I am used to but yummy) and a glass of exquisite dessert wine.

I stopped by the American couple’s table. I had been given but forgotten the woman’s name on the street earlier but promptly forgotten, so we did a reintroduction. Julie and her husband Robert, it turns out, are from Richmond, VA, where my parents lived in retirement. Small world. She very graciously said she’d thought of inviting me to join them for dinner (something about a person eating alone seems to really upset some people, or maybe they just wanted someone new to talk to), and when we established that we, along with the Australians, would all be at the same hotel in Bolsena tomorrow, she suggested that if I’d like perhaps I could join them then. I’ve got my own little traveling community.

All in all, it’s been a relaxing three days. Tomorrow, a bit of bus, ten or so miles of walking, and then a hotel by a lake with a pool. All is well.