Living the dream

Late photo change:

I went for a walk later and had fabulous views of Fiesole (left) and Florence (middle midground )from about 900m. The light was shifting and the waves of Tuscan hills spread out before me, the beautiful spring greens of the woodland in the foreground.

As I write this birdsong filters through the dark. We may have nightingales near the house.

Sometimes it feels as if I am reliving the steps taken by the Newby's in their 'A Small Place in Italy' which recounts their search for and travais with a small house (and sitting tenants and many cockroaches) in the Tuscan hills above Massa-Carrara.

Today I am setting out the rights of way issues there may or may not be on the property we are intent on buying. To do this I have had recourse to a pen and paper.

Tomorrow I travel to the property for a site meeting in which the 'deviazione D' will be marked out with sticks.

Any old rural property is likely to have rights of way issues and this is further complicated by the often extreme fragmentation of land ownership and holdings in Italy. A further layer of complexity can be added if any previous changes to 'strade vicinale' (literally neighbourhood/neighbours roads) have not been cleared with the local authority and the neighbours themselves.

This is not the case here but as someone said the bureaucracy of Italian planning regulations (and the many ruses to get around or ignore these entirely) keeps an awful lot of people in work.

A gloomy day in T-shire. And a public holiday. Not realising what this was for I just looked it up and I find it is 'Liberation Day'.

April 25 is the day on which Italy celebrates the total liberation of the national territory from the 20 year reign of Mussolini's Fascist regime and the Nazi occupation. 

As they have said for some time now in Italy, 'Resistenza. Ora e Sempre.' Resistance. Now and forever.

On a more prosaic note, one hopes that all the rights of way issues will be resolved and we will not wake up one morning, as the Newbys did,  to find some stroppy local farmer enforcing a right of way right in the very front of their house.