Radici to Pompeii

At the end of a great lunch in a local cafe and the end of a few days visiting friends at their project home in the hills above Castelnuovo di Garfagnana, I decided to head to Florence, or Firenze as its properly known. By the time I arrived, it was 5pm ish, so I parked up in the hills in a quiet car park in some serious olive growing countryside. A beautiful red sunset finished the day off nicely.

The winding road dropping off the hills revealed Firenze to be a vast sprawling city covering a valley bottom. My plan was to park in a 'park and tram' place, then get the tram into Firenze to go look at and photograph the street statues and buildings. However, five minutes into noise, smell and bustle and my aversion to cities kicked in. I'd changed my mind, so I found a supermarket, bought some bread, fruit and various pickles for the day and drove out of the city.

The paper map revealed some nice winding roads through the hills, so I followed these. First to Greve, then to Siena and onto lake Bolsena.

The first section was the home of Chianti wine, so the landscape was covered in vinyards, olive groves and deciduous trees. Dotted between these were the various wine marques offering stops for tasting and tours.

After Siena, the hills became more rounded, more open and freshly plowed fields dominated, peppered with what looked like Roman villas perched on the multiple hilltops. This was maybe where the many Roman films of Hollywood were filmed. 

From Siena to Bolsena was sheep and cattle land. The hill top towns often had medieval towers and high walls, with modern buildings sprawled around the outside, circling these beautiful historic sites like an ivy vine trying to cover its host up.

At one point, I followed a beautiful old Ferrari soft top driven by an old guy, cruising through wide open valley bottom roads.

The roads here are a bit like England, a mix of completely falling apart through to super smooth fresh black tarmac. Speed cameras are everywhere too, another hidden tax for the vehicle owner in a western economy. 

The lake at Bolsana is huge. Campsites  and private proteries line the lake shore. Pretty much all of the lakes in Cumbria could fit into it at a guess. It's the biggest of the three lakes running south west towards Rome and probably these three supply a significant amount of water there.

 After a brief stop for pictures and snacks, my route took me south east, back up into the hills to avoid Rome and also follow the central hills, first to Terni, then down to Altederia before descending to the coast to find Pompeii.

What a great route winding under the 2200m peaks of the Sirente Velino Regional Park. They were all snow covered and as the sun set, started to glow red. Garmin Twatnav added in some interesting sections of shortcuts and old sections of back road to make the drive more interesting. Once I was level with Napoli, I turned downhill.

Great day of driving which finished with a narrow and very bendy climb upto the hilltop town of San Gregorio Matese for a very random viewpoint park up. It even came with animals jumping on the Landy roof!!