Space heater (early version)

We popped down to the village Christmas Tree Festa. In strategic points these huge sections of hollow chestnut trunk were being used as magnificent braziers to keep people warm. (The weather was clement compared to the weeks of rain but sitting in the cleft of a steep valley a sluggish cooling damp hung in the air.)

Excellent mulled wine, chestnut flour polenta and ‘bruciate’ - roasted chestnuts. In the high mountain villages chestnuts were an essential source of protein and carbohydrates through the cold, often snowbound winters.

More heavy rain forecast tomorrow and the weather moving towards our first frosts.

An extra of a different sort of internal space heater - the last of the cayenne pepper harvest strung up to dry in front of the fire. We may have to take up a Szechuan diet.