Jones

We decided to do our run in the cool of the morning, rather than the 30 degree heat of the afternoon which seems to be our usual, rather unwise, “choice.”

At 8am, there was barely any traffic on the little road through the altiplano, so we ran up and down it, surrounded by the most amazing scenery.

The Piano Grande is a huge expanse of flat prairie ringed by bare, whaleback mountains and stretching, uninterrupted by tree or hedge, for kilometres and kilometres. It was used by Zeffirelli as a setting for his Franciscan film Brother Sun, Sister Moon. (Which I’ve never seen and now want to.)

The hilltop village you can see in the photos is Castelluccio, famous for its lentils – the fields should be in flower in early June so we were just too early. We have purchased some of last year’s to take home though.

You can probably spot that Castelluccio looks like a bit of a wreck. It was severely affected by earthquakes in 2016 and 2017, with both bell towers collapsing along with about 60% of the historic settlement.

Work to repair the village is in progress, and is planned to be completed in 2028, at a cost of about €60 million. 

Post run, we sat and enjoyed two cups of coffee – a rare treat. Then we walked Flynn over to admire the horses – we’re camped opposite a horse ranch, offering anything from donkey rides to whole weeks in the saddle. The ranch seems to own herds and herds of horses – here one lot is being moved from one bit of grass to another over the road.

We’d have loved to stay, but the weather was on the turn. It made more sense to drive to Assisi. Rain is forecast, so some church-viewing might be in order. For the first time, we couldn’t get a spot in the sosta because it was full. Maybe the holiday weekend, maybe just that it’s now June. Anyway, we found a motorhome-friendly car park even nearer to town, and got ourselves settled there just before the rain started.

Once it was over, we set off to view a church. Not just any church, though, but the Basilica of San Francesco d’Assisi, which is the burial place of St Francis, who died in 1226, and a bit of an art gallery.

The Lower Church has the entrance to Francis’s crypt, which was only brought to light in 1818 after 52 days of digging. He had been hidden after his funeral for safekeeping, apparently. (Did people steal dead saints in the 13C?) I have no idea how they knew they had found the right body, especially in 1818 before there was any DNA testing or carbon-dating. 

Photos are forbidden but we managed to sneak the odd shot after spotting some nuns snapping away.

The Upper Church is the main event, filled with Giotto’s frescoes of the life of St Francis. 

This is one of the most famous, Francis Preaching to the Birds.

And this is the other top hit, Driving the Devils from Arezzo.

Churched out, we explored Assisi a bit, but it was jammed with tourists (unlike cultured travellers like ourselves, cough, cough), so we rapidly got cheesed off and headed back to Jones.

Just after we got back, the rain came down in buckets, accompanied by thunder and lightning for good measure. We rapidly cooled on the idea of staying in the Assisi car park, given the thirty minute hike uphill to town might end up being a wet one. 

There wasn’t really enough 5G to search out other options, so we plumped for another car park I’d previously bookmarked, an hour away, in Castiglione del Lago, on Lake Trasimeno.

When I fed Flynn, his food cupboard, to the right of the door, was wet inside. Rog went up onto Jones’s roof and found a small crack, about 1.5cm long. It turns out that the vindictive bridge had caused some real damage. He patched the crack with Silkoflex, and as I type he is booking us into the dealer for a full examination. I suspect my tooth will have to stay broken – not sure we can afford both dentistry and van repairs 😦

On the plus side, we finally got an Italian pizza! It was still raining intermittently when we left Jones, so we settled for a lakeshore restaurant rather than one in the old town. It had quite bad Tripadvisor reviews, interspersed with very good ones. We suspect a local restaurant war and dived in anyway. The wait staff were grumpy to start with but warmed to us as we ordered a bottle of red. We started with a sharer of “river fish” polpette – good, especially the green sauce.

Then sir had a traditional Diovolo pizza and madam went for weird cheese, lemon rind, anchovies and gentian. Luckily gentian turned out to be lamb’s lettuce.