Snow, sunsets and surprise nordic walking races…

Ciao a tutti,

How is everyone? I don’t have a great deal to update on but I do have a ton of photos! My DIY motivation has taken a severe dip so I’ve done absolutely nothing on that front. However, Pane Caldo has been making some headway on a hatch for our perilous stairway to stop the heat from downstairs escaping upstairs, and he’s been drilling holes in the walls for vents. It appears to be challenging. So far, he’s broken a drill and snapped a chisel in half.

Walking around Sarnano

I, meanwhile, have been out on lots of lovely walks locally with my neighbours. It’s thanks to this that this week’s blog is photo heavy.

This is the beautiful San Liberato monastery

Taken from around the Sarnano area.

Taken from a neighbours house

Taken on another walk from the house…

It’s snowy!!! I’ll need to work out how to put on snow chains soon.

Sarnano and the snow capped mountains.

Sarnano from below

Taken from my neighbour’s garden

Pretty snow 🙂

Random Nordic Walking Event!

Last weekend something weird happened. My neighbour asked me if I wanted to go to a `festa` in town. It would involve a bunch of people dressed as Father Christmas racing around the town. Who wouldn’t want to see that? So we got up early and headed down there……….and then I don’t know quite what happened. Suffice it to say there were no Father Christmas’s. I ended up being enrolled on a 7km race as part of a Nordic Walking Team. (Presumably this was the racing around town part).  I have never Nordic walked! It turns out that it’s actually quite difficult and by the end I was still nowhere near doing it right. However, it was a good laugh and I met some lovely people and I’m pleased to have learnt a lovely new walk around Sarnano. I might even consider joining the Nordic Walking School. Even better, I got a bottle of wine and some pasta as my “prize” (despite our team, which started pretty much first, coming pretty much last… it’s the taking part that counts!).

House History

I’ve been learning a little more about my house and have even met a couple of people in the local area that lived in the house decades ago. Apparently the bathroom used to be a small bedroom as there was an outhouse for the bathroom, the floor used to have lots of holes in so you could see the cantina (I dread to think about the horrors that could have come up!), and my personal favourite, the upstairs bedroom used to be for pigeons! I had never thought about having a room for pigeons before!

Animal Watch

Animal watch in the last couple of weeks has been reasonably active. I’m back in the UK now so I’m missing Batfink the cat. My neighbour has been sending me some photo’s though 🙂 Meanwhile these are some other animals from the last couple of weeks.

This is Pippa. He belongs to one of my neighbours. He was adopted after just turning up one day. I don’t think he’s a duck because he’s gigantic but I don’t think he looks very goose like.

We have a donkey farm a few miles away – who knew?! All the donkey’s are slightly different breeds. Apparently this is obvious (they all look pretty similar to me).

This is Drago my neighbour’s dog. He hates his photo taken so this is a rarity!

These are some rogue sheep ‘guard’ dogs. They’re called Pastor Maremmano and according to my neighbours they’re quite vicious because they have to defend the flock against wolves. They’re certainly big but I think they look quite cuddly. My neighbour insisted we take refuge behind a gate. The sheep come down from the mountains in the winter and they’ve been doing a tour of our local fields for a few hours at a time.

Sheep on tour. I’m considering mounting Operation FreeSheep (they’ll get eaten at Easter) but I haven’t worked out where to hide them yet.

Now I’m home for Christmas so animal watch will be less exotic for the next month. So. Here’s my Nan’s dog 🙂

I think that about sums up the last week or two. All that’s left is for me to wish you all a lovely Christmas break and a Happy New Year and thank you all so much for your support and feedback over the last year! It’s much appreciated! 🙂

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