Getting high in Umbria

I won’t lie, I have been having a great time. I was whisked away Sunday by a friend to go to Castelluccio. All I previously knew of Castelluccio was that it sat beside or over a great altopiano, or high plain and that they grew uniquely small and delicious lentils there. All that is true.

What is also true is that the trip to reach Castelluccio is extraordinary. From the far north of Umbria you must travel south and east, passing lots of familiar places, like Assisi and Spello, but near Foligno (which is famously a city where they bottle loads of cheap wine, because the world needs cheap wine as well as pricey wine) you turn east. Immediately you slide into a landscape of high mountains and narrow passes called “gola”. Towns are carved into the mountainsides, with the houses using the very rock for one or two walls for warmth, because winter comes early, blows cold and stays long in that part of Umbria. Some, my friend told me, are abandoned and nearly unreachable. Some are still inhabited and can be reached with difficulty. It’s a zone where it is natural to imagine yourself back in the Middle Ages. Now, tour bus after tour bus passed us as we stood on a stone bridge looking at trout farms on one side and rafting centers on the other. The river is the Nera, and this is the Valnerina. She is famous for the farmed trout that thrive in the frigid waters. Those waters are also the clearest I have seen in decades.

A bit further along the road to Norcia we began to see van after truck after van selling red potatoes. “The famous red potatoes of Colfiorito,” I’m told. Tina bought red potatoes and onions. I bought a single bag of the smallest ones, because I am always looking for small potatoes, and found they were cheaper instead of more expensive! The woman who sold them to me reassured us that everything they sell they grow. She was clearly a hardworking woman of the land, but she had a Paris Hilton of a dog who might have weighed two pounds and trembled all the time I petted him, which he both wanted and feared. I understand that.

We have been experiencing frigid weather in Umbria lately, as much as 10°C lower than normal. In the Valnerina it was even colder. In the Valnerina it is always colder. The difference in Farenheit was like the difference between 50° and 32°. It’s noticeable, believe me.

We went on to Norcia, where we stopped briefly to see Tina’s niece-in-law. I just love it when you meet someone new and like them instantly, and that’s what happened. She is young and lovely, studies jurisprudence in Rome where she travels once a week. What energy that must take. Allesandra is her name and she will come into cookery pages ahead, because she likes food and wants to come eat at my house.

From there, we took the upward track toward Castelluccio. We arrived at the beginning of the Parco Nazionale dei Sibellini. The park was founded about 50 years ago. I find it remarkable that in 1959, when Italy was just beginning to see a recovery from a devastating Second World War, they had the courage and trust to set aside this splendid place so that it could not be overrun and wrecked. It is still as rugged as it would ever have been. The mountains were snow covered already. The town, perched above the plain, has comforts for visitors, but she doesn’t dress up for them. The plain itself is natural. What there is, you see. At this time of year there is an extent of sheared, brown ground that looks velvety. There are darker courses running through it which carry the melt waters and rains off the mountain and end in what they call a well and which appears to be the drain in a giantìs bathtub. At the beginning you can stand on a cliff and see pretty much the whole thing.

The scale and the emptiness make it look manageable, but if you notice a tiny ant passing across the plain, it’s really a horse. The only establishment on the valley floor is a ranch which is home for a motley crew of horse breeds from pony to cart horse. They don’t mind if you stop and watch. Nearby, across the plain, are flocks of sheep and the dogs who guard them.

But if you are hungry, you must press on, across the plain and up the mountains at the edge that borders le Marche. There perches Castelluccio. The first thing I noticed was that most of the buildings were written on. From time immemorial, it has been their tradition to write all the gossip where anyone may see. Either life has not been very scandalous lately, or the dialct got in the way of my understanding it, because it read fairly tame.

Castelluccio grows sheep and lentils, the tiniest and finest lentils in the world, I believe. We chose a restaurant that served both. I ordered a bowl of ragrant lentils with a piece of sausage followed by castrato, which is older than lamb but younger than sheep. The meat was grilled over wood and you could taste the smoke. Both dishes were just excellent. Tina ordered tagliatelle al tartufo, which was a big plate of the freshest of homemade egg noodles tossed with oil and freshly sliced black truffle. Delicious! Then she ate roasted sausages with an enormous pile of French fries, which she found impressive.

Local people call the Sibellini mountains the cloud factory. The moist air rises from the Adriatic Sea and le Marche, and as it rises over these mountains, it condenses and becomes cloud. The entire zone is under cloud a great deal of the time. From the moment we left the Valnerina, we never saw the sun again. Tina tells me that she has only very rarely seen the top of Monte Sibelle in the height of driest summer.

We stopped along the road on the way back so that Tina could cut some branches of a shubby plant that is the first to turn a beautiful coral red. I found wild thyme and excitedly collected a handful. It will become something special to me, believe it. The perfume is superb!

And so we rode home, talking about the life that awaited us in our own nook of Umbria. Although it still wasn’t late, it was completely dark coming up the highway. When I came inside I decided to cook a few red potatoes of Colfiorito just to see what they are like. They are stupendous. The veritable queen of potatoes. I wish I’d bought 20 kilos instead of 10 pounds.

Tina said she likes to show people who have never seen them the places she loves, because it makes her see them again with new eyes. I was so privileged to be the new eyes that day.

I forgot to take my camera, well, really I didn’t know where we were going! So I have been casting about the internet looking for photos I can borrow for this post. Fabrizio64 who has incredible nature photos on Flickr, very kindly said yes, show mine!