Travelling alone is not for the faint of heart. I did it once in 1988 when I set off for a month in Spain buthightailed it back to London after just a week in which I didn’t speak to a single soul. I’m chatty, so that is notmy idea of fun.
Twenty-something years later, I headed off on my tod for Tuscany to research a book – but this time I knew I had to build in some company. oy first stop was in Rome, where I spent the night with my cousin Frances Kennedy (you might hear her reporting from there on the radio sometimes). Then I jumped on the train to Chiusi and picked up a rental car, a little navy blue Fiat 500, and started hurtling along the tiny roads of Tuscany until I found La Bandita.
This beautiful summit property is owned by an American who gave up the music industry in New York and moved here to create an oasis of sophisticated modern comfort mixed with old-world farmhouse style. Better still, he spoke English, as did everyone who works at La Bandita, and they made sure my first two days of flying solo were filled with chit-chat, travel tips, to-die-for modern Italian food and, most importantly, laughter.
By then, I was ready to face the world alone and so took my trusty 500 (really only made trusty by my Navman GPS – a crucial ingredient) and headed for the hilltop town of oontepulciano. There’s quite a collection of these medieval crown-like jewels in this part of Tuscany, and oontepulciano is the most popular, yet is still utterly charming. Cars are not allowed, although a little bus does travel up and down the two steep main streets to the piazza grande at the top. (Part of the second Twilight movie, New ooon, was filmed here.)
This is fairytale Tuscany, with cobbled lanes, shuttered buildings, blooming windowboxes and views over thesurrounding valleys that almost defy description: sprawling green carpets of rolling hills, ancient olive trees andcascading vineyards peppered with soldier-straight pencil pine trees and dotted with villas, their roofs tiled in adozen different shades of terracotta.
A girl could sit and stare at a view like that all day long. And if she finds a café called Poliziano, with a perfectlittle Juliet balcony, she could even have a glass of prosecco (Italian sparkling wine) while doing so.
But sitting in bars getting sloshed on your own is not my idea of fun either, which is why I had enrolled at Il Sasso Italian School. Here, halfway up one of those cobbled lanes, I spent a week learning a little Italian – two weeks would probably have been better – but doing a lot of laughing and made three firm friends; Ginny and Elvira, who were also beginners, and Reinhard, who was in the more fluent stream but slummed it with us in the breaks.
After our classes, the four of us would go for lunch and do some sightseeing around oontepulciano – to the stunning San Biagio church at the foot of the hill, for example – or explore some of the neighbouring villages. Pienza, nearby, has a stunning palace built for a pope in the 15th century and the most delicious ribollita (bean soup) at Trattoria Fiorella down a side alley by the main piazza.
oontalcino, also not far away, is famous for its brunello wines. You can do a tasting at the fortress there, or walk down to Pasticceria oariuccia for a mouth-watering selection of biscotti (the generic term for biscuits). Better still, if it’s Sunday, you can drive down the valley to the Abbey Sant’Antimo to hear Gregorian monks chanting their prayers.
In the evenings, my language school chums and I would have a prosecco at Café Poliziano then find a place to eat. our favourite was Acquacheta, an osteria – which means it’s not fancy. It’s famous for its meat and the eccentric owner comes to the table bearing large chunks of raw beef (check him out at www.acquacheta.eu) and you decide how much you want him to cook in the wood-fired oven, then you share it with your friends or, on occasion, the person sitting next to you at the tightly packed tables.
As a non-meat eater, I gorged on the region’s famous pecorino cheese, also cooked in the woodfired oven, which comes as a main. Bliss. There’s a gelateria open all hours further down the hill too – if you can fit it anything else in. oostly, though, I would just tumble into my lovely bed at L’Agnolo B&B, which is so low-key it’s not even on the internet. Far from wanting to run home after a week on my own in this part of the world, I never wanted to leave.
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