Category Archives: food

bikes, Europe, food, travel

A week in the Aosta Valley, e un po più.

Leave a comment

Born of the despondency induced by the wet, muddy and lonely traipse through Belgium, I looked for a way I might spend a bit more time in one place rather than just riding through – so as to met and get to know some people a bit more than previously on my travels. Somewhere in the Saarland of Germany I read a blog post about volunteering work on farms on a short to medium term basis in exchange for meals and board. My interest was piqued – I investigated further and signed up for the Italian list and contact details. A week on, a farm upon entering Italy seemed a good idea as it would be a useful resumption of my meagre efforts to learn the language.

By the time I left Strasbourg I’d found a farm in a suitable area of Italy (it made sense for it to be in the north-west so that I could ride there). This planning and the setting of a tentative arrival date, and improving weather, I think helped give extra purpose to my riding – it’s nice to have little goals to work towards sometimes instead of just wandering and aimlessly exploring. It was a much happier week – but then the mountains were bigger and I got covered in less rain and mud; but even when it was muddy and wet, it seemed less overwhelming.

So that is how I came to spend a week on a small family-run organic vineyard on the slopes of the beautiful Aosta Valley. A brief introduction: Gualtiero, Liana, Bea and Edo have about three hectares of a variety of grapes and a small winery. Most of the grapes are particular to the local area and the vineyard was started by Gualtiero’s father, I think, about seventy years ago. As well as grapes, there’s a substantial garden growing (and kiwifruit vines – home!) and Liana is a fantastic cook – we seem to eat predominantly from their garden and other local produce. Bea studied viticulture in Pisa and has recently returned home – she was the contact for organising my stay and I think as well as having volunteers to stay and help with the large amount of work to be done, volunteers come so that Bea has new people to meet as she’s very sociable and keen to practice her English speaking.

It’s been a tremendous week, far exceeding my expectations – the work on the vines is pleasant in the sun and heat is not too onerous; there’s has been plenty of little trips here and there in the valley outside of work to see new things; the food and wine has been unbelievably good (I’ve eaten so much fontina cheese, drunken great wine and probably a bit too much grappa); I’ve had the chance to speak a lot of Italian (I think my speech is improving, but my vocabulary isn’t really and with a small vocabulary I really struggle to understand Italian spoken at a normal pace – still it’s a lot of fun); the people (the family and other volunteers alike) are friendly and funny, keen to learn English or Italian as appropriate; and I’m loving being back in proper mountains (if the work get a little boring, one only has to sneak a peak at the scenery for respite).

There’s just one small problem – I don’t know how I can leave, yet I know I have to. On one hand, the desire to ride a bike and explore this country for the next two months still beats strongly; on the other, it’s so damn good here and I’d almost be a fool to leave. I was planning to leave today after nine days, but I just can’t do that yet.

Every meal is taken sat around the table (I’ve not seen the TV on all week) and with a swell in numbers of volunteers over the weekend we’re now up to ten people in total – Sundays so far seem to be particularly festive (helped by yesterday being Liana’s birthday) and the wine, grappa and scotch was almost as abundant as the food last night. So after last night and the upcoming harvest day on Wednesday (we’ve been harvesting most of the time so far, but this Wednesday a large amount of friends and family will arrive for the day to help bring in the Pinot Grigio), I’ve not even made a move towards my bike today. Yet, I’m really looking forward to going home to NZ in December for, at least, five months – so I have to leave sometime and the longer I leave it, I think the harder it will be…

Enough soul-searching: a few pictures and details of what I’ve been doing for the past week. Unfortunately, I don’t tend to carry a camera when I’m working – so there are not many photos of grapes and vines, but I’m just going to assume you know what they look like. Work for the most part has mostly been starting the harvest of the earlier ripening varieties of grapes, and to some extent thinning leaves around the grapes to let the sun in and a bit of bird, bee & wasp protection. It’s pretty easy work, but enjoyable in the sun and heat passing the time chatting or in companionable silence with good people. Every so often something reminds me strongly of my younger years when we had a berry and kiwifruit orchard – the little orchard tractor (this one’s a Ferrari, I prefer the Massey Ferguson 35), riding on the back of the venerable Hilux (must be almost as old as me & more suited to Barry Crump scaring Scotty to bits or being almost-destroyed by the Top Gear crew) avoiding overhanging branches and generally working with vines. Ah, nostalgia.

Fenis Castle – out for a drink after work.

The fruits of the labour – well, last year’s.

Bea was heading up into the mountains for the night to play the violin with some musical friends – she took Amy & I along as apparently it’s beautiful up there. It was. We wound our way up a side valley to about 1600 m and as the day ended the big wide sky opened up above us. As I understand it, the premier amateur observatory for Italy is at Saint Barthelemy due to the lack of light pollution. While Bea played, Amy & I wandered – the moon was a bit bright for star gazing but it was a beautiful evening all the same. We stayed the night in the grandparents’ former home, got up early, collected yet more produce from the garden and descended back to breakfast and work. I resolved to ride my bike back up the big hill to visit again when I got the chance.

One lunchtime when it was a little cooler I forsook a siesta and went for a little ride climbing a fair bit as I followed the valley-side east.

Right across the road from the house, a neighbour started to dig to build a new house a while ago. He found Roman ruins, so his house now has to go somewhere else as the site is now an archaeological dig, with some bits apparently pre-dating the Romans by a couple of thousand years too.

It’s a struggle to leave such waking and working views behind.

We actually had a little rain Friday afternoon, so the grapes weren’t able to be harvested until they’d dried out Saturday afternoon. I seized my chance and biked back up the hill to Saint Barthelemy – considerably easier than Great St Bernard due to lack of luggage, even though it seemed steeper in parts. Once I reached the village I stopped for slice of cake at the bar of Bea’s friend. The nominal goal of the day was to reach 2000 m – this seemed easily achievable as I was consistently climbing 100 m each ten minutes. However, behind the village at around 1950 m the sealed road ended and the double-track led me into a gorgeous valley where the climbing stopped. I met a father and son (thirteen years and only studying five languages) who were riding up the valley. With the promise of being able to buy fresh cheese from a dairy, I tagged along happy to be chatting a bit in English and a bit in Italian.

The promised cheese didn’t eventuate, but I hardly need any more and the stupendous views were more than enough consolation. I had to go a little past the last farm and the new refugio to get my two thousand metres. I returned for lunch at the same bar – due to some misunderstanding, my soup was pretty much a bowl of fontina cheese interspersed slightly with bread, cabbage and onion. Wonderful cheese overload & a local dish too – but not as filling as promised. I dashed back down the hill about five times faster than I climbed it – there is something quite fun about pinning a mountain-bike into hairpin corners at 60 km/h and passing cars down mountain roads. Perhaps when I’m to old to be shaken to bits and cleaning mud off me and my bike, road-biking may be an alternative.

Oh, after a lifetime of not being able to understand why people eat figs – the ones around here are amazing and I now eat figs. And the first crop of liquorice was taken from the garden today – promptly weighed out and put in a few bottles of previously un-infused grappa. Chewing on the liquorice sticks from the bottle we finished last night was about as close to alcohol as I came today. Apart from the sampling in the winery – which is full of bright shiny stainless steel vessels, bliss. The vessels are getting a thorough hot-water pressure clean at the moment to prepare for the start of winemaking in earnest on Wednesday. They’re process vessels – naturally I’m interested in seeing that, unfortunately.

That’s about it of note really – just my inability to say goodbye and leave remains. I’ve got to stop making good friends in such different places around the world; I think my chances of continuing being able to visit them are unsustainable.

city, Europe, family, food, hiking, travel

A family week for a Chianti wedding

Leave a comment

The main impetus for a month of family visiting me from the Southern Hemisphere at this particular time was that my second-cousin (that is, my mother’s cousin’s daughter) Catherine and her fiancé Chris were getting married in Tuscany after a lot of planning. As well as the parents of the bride, & Mum and Adele, also along for the week in Chianti from our side of the family were two cousins, Trish (from most of my previous adventures in & around London) and Keith, and my aunt Valerie from Sydney (who’d I’d last seen on the our big west-USA roadtrip three years ago). Sorting out all the flights, accommodation, rental car etc. between such far-flung people was not particularly easy – but it all came together in the end, with different people sorting various things out.

Many of the wedding guests stayed in the same building, four separate apartments, for the week with others joining us later in the week staying closer to the castle. I was excited to be back in Italy yet again as I really enjoyed the week when my Kiwi cousin got married nearby six years ago and also since then I’ve learnt a little bit of Italian at work. Plus Tuscany is beautiful and the food and red wine excellent. At least this time, being six weeks earlier in the year, was more moderate in temperature – mid-twenties is much better than high-thirties.

With the wedding later in the week we had a few days to amuse ourselves. While I still had some enthusiasm for driving a large people-mover on windy & slow Tuscan roads we did a couple of day trips to Siena and San Gimignano. The weather wasn’t as good mid-week, but by then I was keen to explore the pretty hill-top villages that one could see from Castello di Meleto – Adele was happy to oblige and come along for some big walks exploring the local hills, tracks and restaurants.

Home for the week

Looking down to the castle

And out over the Chianti hills – much hillier and more wooded than around San Gimignano, where we stayed last time

Siena – while eating the most expensive, but not necessarily the best, gelato of the week

Siena Duomo again

Back looking at the towers in San Gimignano – where Mum, Adele & I somehow managed to bump into our fourth-cousin (we share the same great-great-great-great grandparents, I think) from NZ & her fiancé completely unexpectedly

The ground around where we were staying (that’s the villa at top-left) was so rocky only grapes or olives were any good for cultivating

I’d had my eye caught by the large walled village right across the other side of the valley – as it wasn’t on many maps, I was intrigued. To walk off lunch & the early wine-tasting Adele & I set off in that direction happy to explore small lanes. Perhaps the road we chose was steeper than we bargained for, but we were enjoying ourselves. We did get to the village and unlike the previous ones we’d been to, it was pretty much deserted with a church and single cafe seeming the only public buildings. A couple of lost bikepackers rode in, so that was encouraging (that there were bikepackers in the area, not that they were lost); we had more ice cream in the sun.

Buoyed by the success of Tuesday’s exploring we set Wednesday aside for a more ambitious route – thanks to the big map boards in Gaiole-in-Chianti central car park, we had plenty to choose from. These well defined routes went some way to explaining why there seemed to be so many people randomly walking and mountain-biking through the estate during our stay.

We’d reached our objective, Barbischio (another village we’d seen across the valley on the previous day’s walk), by lunchtime. Perhaps spurred on by the wine and the grappa/limoncello, it was decided it was a good idea to walk up another big hill to a small ruined keep that had been taunting me like a French knight. It was a good idea, but our chosen route took us to the top of the wrong hill – leaving the keep to “taunt us a second time”. Still, can’t complain about six hour walking around with great company in the sun spotting deer, wild boar, snakes and multitudes of lizards and admiring the landscape.

Half this tower had fallen down, so someone had built their house inside the shell

Like a few other complexes we’d seen around, these four or so new houses were all but finished, and completely deserted

The morning of the wedding (four o’clock service) I could stand the taunting of the keep no more, so Mum, Valerie, Adele & I drove up there (having worked out how to get there). It was pretty ruined, so we had fun pretending we were like the Famous Five, or some such, exploring it. The views back down to Gaiole & beyond were worth it too.

We popped into another small town, Radda-in-Chianti for a little wander, a quick bite and more gelato – I made the mistake, not to be repeated, of not getting lemon as one of the three scoops. With what was supposed to be plenty of time, we returned home to eat & prepare for the wedding; that is, until Adele found the first of her five flights home starting the next day had been cancelled due to strike action. So cue a couple of hours of stress trying to find a nearby flight that would get Adele to Heathrow after the wedding, but before her intercontinental journey was to start. Somehow we both managed to sort that out and still get to the wedding scrubbed up, all will be well when the travel insurance stumps up.

Earlier concerns over the weather for the outside service proved unfounded and it was good in such a beautiful setting. Now is when I find that I really did leave all photography of pretty much everything wedding-related to those with better cameras and ability – all I have is this pre-shot of the strings. Shocking. Still, I’ll have to go off my memory of a simple & elegant service, with some nice readings and a very beautiful happy couple (that was mostly Catherine, but Chris scrubbed up pretty well too).

So much food, again. Canapés & cocktails on the lawn while the photos were being taken; dinner and speeches in the castle; and finally cake-cutting out in the garden as the night drew in. Great night.

Adele managed to get all packed up the morning after the night before and we, Mum & Valerie too, were off to drop her at Pisa airport. It was supposed to be the relatively close Florence airport, but flight rearrangement meant a lot more driving – but we got to see the tower again. With goodbyes, lunch, final Italian gelati for a while & the sightseeing done we took a rather roundabout route home via Lucca as I forgot there was a difference between the autostrada and highway between Florence & Pisa. Nevermind, we got to see the huge thunderstorm pummelling Chianti as we drove towards it.

That was about the week really – a fantastic one spent with family in a stunning setting with plenty of top-notch food & red wine and just enough exercise to offset it and stop me going slightly more crazy.

bikes, combe raiders, food, friends, GPS, MTB, UK

Christmas Rides

Leave a comment

It’s been a bit quiet on here recently – mainly because me riding pretty much every day for the last four weeks is not all that interesting for anyone but me (& the odd other bike nut).  I’ve upgraded the wheels on my Surly Ogre to Stans Arch rims & tyres to Nobby Nics – it’s a marked improvement in weight, grip, reassurance, acceleration, rolling resistance &, most of all, fun.  The following week there was a rather chilly night spent bikepacking out in the New Forest just north of Burley somewhere.

Then Christmas ride season began – first up with the biggest group of Combe Raiders I’ve ever seen:

This on the strangely misty Quantocks – & quite damp under wheel as well. Dave got stuck on a stick:

Much to my surprise, I won the hill climb (by getting the furtherest up a rather steep & technical ascent) – I was well pleased with my giant certificate (that’s a large & very good paperback on the left).

After not really earning it from a less than twenty kilometre ride, it was off to a nearby pub for the award ceremony & an awful lot of food.  Great time had by all – although I had to go for a harder ride the following day to get the most out of my two hundred mile round-trip.

This weekend past I managed two more Christmas rides – and associated meals of course.  The Vindaloo group of the local MTB club (which I ride with if I’m around every second Sunday – so hardly ever over the past two years) had their Christmas ride & curry planned very local to me on Friday night.  The bikes decorated with Christmas lights and wrapping paper and the costumes made the whole thing seem a lot more festive than the Combe Raiders event.  It was only a short local ride, but it was a nice warm, dry evening & there was plenty of good food.

For some reason I thought it a good idea to ride my single speed twenty-odd kilometres to the Christmas ride & dinner for the whole club – this after seeing a rather dismal looking weather forecast.  Anyway, it rained pretty much all day – but it wasn’t cold.  Annoyingly, my front brakes failed about thirty kilometres in – so I rode most of the day with rear brakes of dubious usefulness (just as well the Forest is almost entirely flat).  Somewhere out near Burley & Picket Post our fearless leaders started to get a little vague in our route – just as we got out of the trees onto the heathland in the driving rain.  Oh well – we made it back to the pub eventually for another huge meal.  It probably was just as well I had to ride all the way home – wasn’t really intending to do close on eighty singlespeed kilometres for the day, but I survived & really quite enjoyed it.

Canada, city, engineering, food, roadtrip, travel

Montreal

Leave a comment

Montreal had never really been much of a blip on my radar of places to visit one day.  But the little I read about the city after deciding to include it on this little drive led me to believe that I would quite enjoy it – at the least, there would be good poutine (which was on my quite long list of “things I must eat while in Canada & the States”).  A city of neighbourhoods, with excellent food it sounded good fun to explore for a couple of days.

We easily found our way on to the island (curiously, Montreal is an island in the St Lawrence River – I did not know that beforehand) and then to the apartment.  Apparently, our neighbourhood was good for food so we just wandered out the door to the end of the block to peruse the local haunts – Jane spied a good looking cupcake shop that was noted for a later date.  What followed at a rather too-hip-for-me cafe was the best meal I’ve had in ages – scallops on a barley risotto with vegetables done to perfection.

It turned out that one of the biggest & best markets in the city was only a few blocks away, so we headed down there after breakfast Saturday.  That probably wasn’t the best idea as I was immediately hungry again – I shouldn’t go into detail of the huge range of produce & meat that was on display.  I managed to cross a bagel off the list; Montreal bagels are supposed to be a little sweeter than most – either way, it was better than I used to bake.  I think we managed to sample half as many plums as we ended up buying – delicious & many varieties.

Jane was aware of the Bixi public bicycle sharing scheme in Montreal from a previous visit.  I was familiar with the concept from London & other European cities – a bit of research shows that the London system is a Bixi system (the largest, with Montreal second) – Bixi being a company set up by the city of Montreal.  Basically, there are over five thousand bicycles at four-hundred docking stations all around the city – for the measly sum of seven dollars for twenty-four hours, one can have have as many half-hour rides as desired (if you take a bike for more than thirty minutes, you get charged extra).  As it turns out, it’s an absolutely fantastic way to see the city.  The bikes are very solid (tough, but pretty heavy), easy to ride, comfortable, internally geared (the range of three is plenty) & with a handy basket on the front.  That is pretty much how we saw a lot of Montreal on the Saturday – interspersed by a fair bit of walking & eating too.

The local church

Not the kind of picture I usually snap while riding bikes, c.f. this

We ditched the bikes for a stroll, rather – a brisk steep walk, to the top of Parc du Mont-Royal – through plenty of leaves to kick around and brilliant colours.

It got a little cloudier

Looking over McGill University to downtown

We spent a fair bit of time riding near water – either along canals or over the river.  Montreal was the biggest industrial centre in the country until surpassed by Toronto in the second half of the twenty-century – strangely, I always find old silos & other industrial relics fascinating. As I write that, I realise that is a little weird – but think of the hundreds of people that used to work there making all sorts of things.



We went downtown for a little while, but I wasn’t overly impressed as it was sort of European, but not properly so.  The neighbourhoods were much more fun – so we walked back to where Jane stayed last time & found a great hot chocolate & more cakes.  We returned to the same cafe for dinner – I got to have my poutine & it lived up to all expectations; I eat more meals without meat that I ever used to.  I’m not sure this one really counted as it was probably so full of fat & such artery-clogging ingredients.

We worked out we’d biked & walked over forty kilometres the day before (just as well with all the food), so it was a little slower start on Sunday.  With still some of our twenty-hours left on the Bixi bikes, we headed off to the botanical gardens in the autumn crispness.  There were some cool lanterns in the Chinese Garden – although I suspect they are better at night.  I narrowly avoided being eaten by a tiger.

There were a few bugs too

Up much too early, the Montreal stay was over as I dropped Jane off at the airport for her to depart to her new life as an optometrist (that bit’s not new) in small town Nova Scotia. It’s not really far to the border & I was gone from Canada again by eight o’clock.

I had no idea that I’d enjoy Montreal so much – but I fear if stayed longer I’d eat well too much and put back on all the weight I lost over summer, plus some more. The whole time I was in Montreal however I did find something very disconcerting about it. It’s so obviously North American with American cars, big wide streets laid out on a grid, Canadian brands and so on – but all the signs & speech is in French, everyone’s better dressed & the food so good, it feels continental. It’s very difficult trying to reconcile all this – will people get upset if I just assume they speak English (most seem to be bilingual)? Annoyingly, the rest of Canada seems to make an effort at being bilingual with their signs, but you get to Quebec & there is next to English on the major signs – that seems a little rude, so I suppose that fits in well.

Anyway, Montreal – well worth a visit for a few days at least, if not more.