This was one of those days

Three days in to our new lives in Italy I had arranged to go and look at that house again in the Garfagnana.

The day dawned and the sun had gone although still 16C as we passed Florence on the motorway. The Principal had a splitting head and I was dreading the bit where the road started twisting and climbing. Seemed inauspicious for this house.

Anyway we got there in just over two hours. By the time we were at 850m alt the temp had dropped from the valley floor high of 13C to 9C with overcast skies and clouds trawling across the tops of the Apuane.

The high hills still sported their winter colours with just the faintest blush of green in the extensive chestnut forests.

We had a good look at the house (see extra with Principal and Benito, the agent) which had two fires roaring, and the hamlet in which it sits. The agent and owner walked me down to the ruined mill - on a really vertiginous drop - that used to grind chestnut, spelt and maize flour until the 1960s.

We liked the house even there are some issues. We then wound our way along altipiano roads at about 1000m. We even saw an old shepherd with a German shepherd dog (an Alsatian) tending a little herd of beautiful cows under the chestnut trees.

We ate a plate of pasta and then headed over the mountain road to the Mediterranean coast at Forte di Marmi - near the towns of Massa and Carrara - famous for their marble quarries.

This was one of the most spectacular and empty roads I have ever driven on. The great mass of one of the Apuane alps - the 'ommomorto' (the Dead Man - because the profile looks like a man's prone face) reared up in front of us - (see extras) while the road plunged to the tight valley floor below.

Once we had made the descent to the valley floor - with enough stone on the road to suggest to us not to linger - the path then climbed high into the mountains past immense bare slopes of limestone before hitting the outliers of the marble-bearing rocks where the quarries begin.

We topped the pass at 800m with a tunnel. The old road climbs up to 960m. Then it was a long descent through harsh country with little quarry villages and more and more marble yards with huge blocks of the stuff numbered awaiting the saw.

It took awhile to get back to our house in Monteloro.