Why Italy?  Because we love Italy!  The contrasts between the two countries are so rich and fantastic!  Gastronomically there is the French cuisine all arrogance and ‘savoir faire’ and then the Italian cuisine all spontaneity and fluster with deep found flavours.  We have chosen to walk in Umbria as it is an area we know well and it is less trodden and generally less familiar than Tuscany or Cinque Terre.  We do hope in the next few years to have three walks running in Italy; in Umbria, Tuscany and the Veneto.  Linking all three, apart from the usual attention to detail on the gastronomic front, will be the thirteenth century artists who have worked in all three areas : Giotto and Giovanni Pisano.  Amongst the other great artists whose works we will see in the Italy walks will be Piero della Francesca, Fra Angelico and Simone Martini as well as the Lorenzetti brothers but, most of all, these are landscape/gastronomic weeks like all the weeks in France and the beauty of Italian art history will be there to colour them all the more.

Simone Martini Chapel of St Martin

Benozzo Gozzoli frescoes

But we concentrate now on Umbria.  This will be a mixture of stunningly dramatic landscape. In the Monti Sibellini it will include a visit to the tiny desolate lake, the Lago di Pilato (the supposed death bed of Pontius Pilate) as well as two other days walking around the crater of Castelluccio.  An extraordinary plethora of flowers here in June, in fact one of the wonders of the flower world, but even in September it is awesomely beautiful.

 
Castellucio

Olive oil groves abound at the foot of Monte Subasio intermingled with the Umbrian Sagrantino vineyards and we will be visiting two very different sorts of winemakers.  Giovanni who makes wonderful Sagrantino wine and virgin pressed olive oil which is sold all over Italy, and  Ambrogio whose wine is served in a concrete vat on his farm.  This is wine made the old-fashioned way.  Not only does Ambrogio make his own wine which we will be sampling together with his own unfiltered olive oil but also his own hams and salamis.  Definitely no additives here.  This is self sufficiency in the extreme with pigs, rabbits, chickens and cows.   When we last visited Ambrogio, his wife kept filling us up with freshly cut slices of their salamis.  After all their generosity we felt we must offer them some of our own produce which we had bought that morning, but they would not touch anything they thought might be commercially tainted!

Norcia

Gastronomy is as high on the list as ever.  Truffles will feature in the cuisine of the chef of the Grotta Azurra hotel in Norcia and we will have a morning truffle hunt with Nicola and Nina, his beautiful chocolate cocker.  When I was there in November, within three minutes we had found six truffles.  Norcia is a tiny circular walled village at the foot of the Sibellini mountains which is famed for its charcuterie of wild boar and the truffles it has.  After seeing how they hunt for truffles, in the evening we will sample the most delicious gnocchi imbued with black truffle and finished off with a grating of white.  Pure hedonism.  I say this as there is something distinctly hedonistic in the smell of a good truffle -  something to do with pheromones.  Also on the menu in the week will be oven-baked pizza, vitello, carciofi, oodles of olive oil, and of course … gelato!

Tortellini making

Norcia itself is incredibly pretty with its small square (sheltering one excellent gelateria for  clandestine enthusiasts). The wall has seven gates that are supposed to represent the seven vestal virgins who stand to protect the village.  The two stark white churches in the square are a dramatic contrast to the strange castle that sits on another side and the classical porphyry loggia that stands opposite.  This all beneath the stark Sibellini mountains rising as a cragged backdrop behind.

The Sibellini mountains

We shall also be staying in the beautiful more gentle landscape of the foothills of Monte Subasio.  Before walking through the vineyards and olive groves of the Valle di Spoleto we will do an early morning visit to the great basilica of San Francesco and view the famous frescoes painted by Giotto .  More time will be spent in the tiny chapel of Saint Martin painted by Simone Martini.  Here we will see the difference between the Sienese artists and those from Florence - the difference between a solid placement in space and an extraordinarily beautiful sense of line and grace.

Perugia

Perugia will be our last port of call.  This is a  fine Etruscan city that H.V. Morton described as one in which he could well imagine how easy it was to murder someone in the Middle Ages.  The meeting between Sparafucile and Rigoletto could not better be placed (though sadly this was not here).  The alleys are narrow and dark and they run off the wonderful Corso Vannucci in a myriad of iniquity.  At the end of the Corso lies the Duomo half veneered in pink marble and with the pulpit on the outside wall where San Benedetto deplored the Flagellants and there in front of the Duomo stands one of the most beautiful fountains in all Italy the Fontana Maggiore sculpted by Nicola and Giovanni Pisano in the thirteenth century.  Of course, being the last day, this would be an ideal opportunity for shopping.

    
Prosciutto and salami