Around Monte Falterona

We took a day off to explore. Up into the Casentino national park. Tuscan side is thick wooded hills rising to 1400m. Romagna side is a badlands of exposed crumbling layered rock and vertiginous valleys. (See road running across rock outcrop on left).

Stopped at Badai Prataglia for coffee, then on to the 'ever-popular' waters of the Bagni di Romagna and through the tortured hills - with a grim site of a Nazi reprisal massacre - and a long winding road under the steep slopes of the north side of Falterona.

The map said there was a road through but it turned out to be a barred road which necessitated a bit of back tracking but a fabulous day.

Saw a stuffed wolf which was surprisingly big and an info note on 'wolf howling' - one of the ways the park monitors its wolf population and through which an amazing amount of information can be gleaned.

Extra of a viewpoint looking over the Romagna Apennines and the oak wood where 27 men were shot as a reprisal and left in shallow graves in 1944