In which Sid and Doris walk in the hills and find a brass band to finish the day.
There is no rationing the rations here so while we set off walking soon after breakfast that is not early. With a hiking map from reception and boots from the boot we are ready to go.
There are three castles we can walk up to. At this point we should say that while many sights are #bestviewedfrombelow we have had no exercise since walking in Paris, so up it is.
Doris weaves together two routes and soon we are up among the views on the splendidly maintained and signposted hiking routes. As our National Geographic doesn’t quite say, these routes are clearly not Italian, they are German.
The region was given to Italy after WW1 by the Allies as thanks for not joining the Austrians and Germans. The Italians then changed all the names, outlawed the local languages and (like the Chinese putting Han people into Tibet) imported Italians. The phone labels our photographs in Italian, as Sid has in the title for the day. The local language is German. In the town church there is no trace of Italian, not from before 1920 or more recently.
We spot a poster-map with a grumpy note in its top corner, possibly sponsored by the unwilling inhabitants of the place now known as Castel Verruca.
Walking back through the village the local dress shop has diversified into making an array of embroidered masks. 5€ plain and €20 fancy.
The hotel has a wonderful garden with a combined lily pond and swimming pool. Sid swims with lilies…
… while Doris takes some advice from a tech-savvy dragonfly to help work out how to fit a lily pond swimming pool into the garden at Bonkers’ Towers.
In the evening Doris hears music and in true Hamelin fashion is lured away from the dinner table to recce the village square. There is an oompah band, snare drum and a range of curly brass, so we go share the fun standing with a beer.
[After a bit of research I can tell you that the circular horn is called a Parforce, and the thing that looks like a euphonium that an elephant has sat on is called a Baritone – D. Oh, and the chap sitting on the bollard is playing the spoons, though I suspect he may not be part of the formal band as they told us it had got rather informal by this point in the evening.]