Nice weekend

There were a couple of interesting bits of news this weekend. First I have been contacted via this blog by a couple, Babette and Paul, who run a website about pilgrim's ways in Europe in general and the Via Francigena in particular. They have travelled the entire route from Canterbury to Rome first on horseback, then by bicycle. They are now in the process of writing a guide about it and wanted to know about accommodation around us. Those of you who have already visited us, will have met and possibly stayed with our lovely neighbours Marco and Susannah. They have long been thinking of letting their guest room out to passing travellers, but thought no one was going to climb up several flights of stairs to stay in fairly basic accommodation. If however, these travellers had just crossed the mountains from Aulla, they’ll probably be glad of the warm welcome that Marco and Susannah would afford them. So, after I just went over to have a chat with them, the B&B at Marco and Susannah’s is now officially open! The view from their guest toilet alone is worth the entry money. Have a look at the Website of Paul and Babette at http://www.pilgrimagepublications.com/ and check the link to their blog on their travels earlier this year. Their motivation for pilgrim’s routes is born out of their conviction for eco-friendly travel, i.e. on horseback, by bike or on foot, which is something I can only endorse. So do check them out!

The other thing that made this rainy day a bit more interesting was our other neighbour Mauro coming over for a favour. He plays the accordion and bagpipes in a traditional folk band, Tandarandan. They play traditional dances of the Lunigiana region. We saw them playing a couple of weeks ago and they are very good. They found a write-up to their latest CD on a Belgian web-site, but couldn’t understand it as it was in Dutch. So I just gave him a translation of this glowing review. For those of you who understand Dutch, check it out on http://www.folkroddels.be/artikels/35644.html. For the rest of you, if you want a flavour of some traditional music of the region check out their web-site on http://www.tandarandan.it/ and click on ascolta for some samples. See the photo above for Mauro in action.