Why travel too far.

I must admit when I booked this weeks accommodation I did not research it too well, I knew it was in the hills between Rome And Naples so automatically assumed I could just pop down and do Pompeii etc. The reality is that Italian country roads and their attendant speed limits are not conducive to speedy travel so like most things it has taken a while to register in my brain. I will save the Rome and Roman antiquities for a future city break type visit. Today I have been exploring Medieval villages, the fact that these villages were usually built on hilltops and mountainsides escaped me until I started walking their streets, of course present me with a hill and I have to go to the top, but when I did finally reach the church at the top of the village of Pizzone I needed a prolonged break to look at the view. My visit to that village was a delight, I only saw two of the inhabitants and they both said hello. The funkiest thing was hearing the strains of 'Smoke on the water' coming from a little bar that didn't even look open, it certainly put a smile on my face. On a whim I followed the road uphill from Pizzone and ended up in the blind valley that my resort is named after, I only saw one car and two foresters on the way there and back, it was a brilliant experience being so remote, once I got over the worry of being eaten by the local bear population. I was starting to feel persecuted with the amount of cloud and rain I have experienced (nothing like Wales of course) but then I am I the hills above the 1550 foot contour what should I expect at this time of year. This afternoon I heard the music outside and I thought it was the ice cream man but it was the local mobile shop so I went over to buy some of his locally sourced fruit and veg, that was another conversation carried out in mostly sign language I really will have to knuckle down and try to learn some Italian. On my way back to the apartment I followed a lady who was searching in the undergrowth I was a little confused until I realised she was looking for snails, she did offer me some - I think, but I refused politely and hurried on my way. This is a lovely quite part of Italy, as I said earlier I just wish I could communicate a little better because unlike in the tourist areas the local people here have no reason to learn English in fact in one of the villages I visited today the villagers were Albanian refugees from two hundred years ago and their Italian was nearly as bad as mine.