Customer Reviews

Walking and Eating in Tuscany and Umbria: Revised Edition

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I was inspired by this guidebook to do 4 days of walks in Tuscany this spring -- from Buonconvento to Montalcino, Sant'Antimo via Ripa D'Orcia to Bagno Vignoni, and on to Pienza. I had previously done the Montepulciano-Pienza walk. Every walk I took was wonderful and I can't recommend this way of seeing Italy highly enough! There is no way I could have done these walks without this book, which I found to be very accurate. There were a few places where I had minor trouble interpreting the directions, but was never really lost, and I found the maps very helpful. Proprieters of the places I stayed or stopped for a meal were sometimes amused, but always pleased, when they heard I was on foot. I also had the Lonely Planet guidebook to walking/hiking in Italy, but found that to be much less helpful and less detailed. It was clear to me that Lasdun and Davis had done painstakingly thorough background research. (i.e., had walked every trail more than once, and had tried every restaurant -- obviously a great hardship, especially in the spring and fall!) It will take me years to do all the walks in this book that call out to me, but I'm already thinking of my next trip (in grape harvest season this time).

I bought this book before a recent trip to Italy. We stayed in a town described in the book and did one of the walks. Wonderful scenery and we thoroughly enjoyed the walk, and the excellent lunch at the restaurant recommended. We thought the book extremely useful and very well researched, and hope to use it to plan more walks next year. - Duncan Naylor and John Cowell

Because of torrential rains I only had the chance to do one of the walks in this book on my visit to Italy this past October--from Ripa d'Orcia to Bagno Vignoni--but it was one of the highlights of my trip. I found the directions to be painstakingly accurate, which was surprising to me considering that this book was published 3-1/2 years ago. Walking from place to place and then eating delicious local cuisine is a wonderful way to explore Italy and I'd love to return and do other walks from this book.

I planned a walking trip to Umbria and Tuscany based on this excellent and thorough guidebook. My wife and I and three other couples, all friends and all in our 50's and 60's, spent two weeks in May of 2000 walking three of the inteneraries in Umbria and seven in Tuscany. The experience was, arguably, the most satisfying vacation any of us has ever made. Fields of red poppies, yellow buttercups,and a vibrant bouquet of many other flowering plants and trees colored our surroundings. The book guided us through dramaticaly changing scenes from stately vineyards, to deep woods, to beautiful medieval and renaissance villages, towns, and abbeys, to mountain pastures and fields of flowers, and to a procession of stunning views. Walking gave our encounters with the places and people of our trip an exhilerating immediacy and intimacy that we would have otherwise missed. Buy the book, make the trip, do the walks, and be entranced. (The Lamole and the San Michele to Radda walks need updating because of property and road changes, but you can still find your way.)

We just returned from a trip to Tuscany and Umbria where we took one of the walks, actually we took 1/2 of one of the walks. We planned to walk from Montepulcina to Pienza stopping at Montechelli for lunch. The book said it was 3 1/2 miles to Montechelli and another 3 1/2 miles to Pienza. It took us 4 hours to walk to Montechell. The walk was beautiful and the directions exact. There were four of us all in good shape but the walk was more exhausting than we expected, given the discription in the book. We knew we could not continue on to Pienza. Montechelli is tiny pristine town without public transportation, but with wonderful people, one of whom gave us a ride back to Montepulcina. I would recomend this book for anyone interested in walking in the area but my experience is to double the amount of time they expect the walks to take .

We found this book delightful, and a real benefit during our first visit to Italy in May of this year. We have holidayed extensively in many parts of France over the years and were looking for some assistance in our first attempt to discover the gems of Italy. Early in our holiday we ate (twice) at the Le Cave de Maiano and really enjoyed it. We also followed one of the walks from Fiesole. We stayed at one of the "agriturismo" recommendations in the book ("La Gavina") for two nights and found it exceptional. The proprietors were very friendly and welcoming. Their house is beautiful and it was really nice to stay on a working farm which produces its own meats, cheeses, vegetables, olive oil, and wine. The evening meal was truly excellent and as good as the best restaurants we ate in. The company was international and great fun. We would recommend this opportunity - and this book - to all future travellers.

We used this book for a trip to Umbria with our children ages 9 and 12 this September and thought it was great, both for the walking and the eating. We have been to Tuscany several times and wanted to branch out to Umbria on this last trip, and can only say we wish we had done so sooner. We stayed in the lovely town of Norcia, and did the "san Eutizio" walk: an amazing adventure with children! Norcia was an easy place to be with kids, the hotel recommended in the book was extremely friendly, the town had such a safe feeling and enough of interest (particularly the gelato bar) to the kids to keep them busy. The walk - one of the longer ones in the book - was an ambitious one for kids, but gave them an exceptional feeling of accomplishment at the end, and they loved the beautiful abbey at San Eutizio, especially enjoyable on our visit because as we ate dinner at the tiny restaurant next door (the only building in the immediate environs) there was a wedding going on, which spilled into the outdoors. While my husband and I lingered over our "vino," the kids went inside the abbey and mingled with the wedding party stragglers, a few of whom - along with our kids of course - crawled through an ancient tunnel behind the altar, an action that is supposed to cure all ills.
We also went up to Castelluccio, the mountain village about 15 miles from Norcia, which was stunningly beautiful, remote, and virtually deserted. There is a small restaurant there which was fabulous, and the sunset behind the austere Sibillini mountains was a stunning backdrop to our outdoor meal. Next time we would plan to stay in this tiny village overnight.
Note: we had the 2005 edition, and the friend who recommended this book says the san eutizio walk wasn't in the original.

My wife and I just returned from a two-week trip to Tuscany and Umbria where we had planned to do several walks in this book. Although the book does not even pretend to address tourists traveling by car, we assumed that would not be a problem, and we were wrong. For example, we set out from Lucca to do #13, a walk in the Garfagnana. Naive American drivers need to know that the road to the trailhead, while beautiful, is a heavy industrial corridor with a large number of trucks as well as cars driving to defy death at high speed on a road that is often only wide enough for one vehicle, usually with no shoulder, often skirting sharply around mountain switch-backs with steep drop-offs. Traffic frequently stops as truck and bus drivers try to figure out who is going to back up, and how, to let the other go by. If you have a car, absolutely only consider doing this walk on the weekend. Also, we attempted #2, the Lamole ring walk. On a typical mid-October day, overcast and drizzling, there was absolutely no place to leave the car, which was very disappointing considering the effort to get there. The one walk we did do, #23, the Monteriggioni ring walk, was ok, but a very long stretch of it, from just after Abbadia a Isola to C. Giubileo, is continuously up a steep grade on a gravel road, mostly with minimal views, and gets to be a real drag. Also, and possibly not the authors' fault, the directions fail near the presumptive end when you encounter CAI signs with different numbers than the authors indicate, and trail options that don't quite fit the description. We got lost and went much further southeast than we should have, adding a pleasant enough but unplanned hour to the trip. Also, the Montauto spur access is completely overgrown now with thick, high thorn bushes at least 20 to 30 feet deep behind the well near the beginning. In sum, I was left wondering how big the target audience for this book is. Although we had a car, we were told that bus schedules are not particularly reliable outside the larger cities. After spending two weeks in the Tuscan and Umbrian countryside, it appears to me that, with the amount of time typical travelers have, the hassle and waste of time taking (and waiting for) busses to and from trailheads away from the major centers would just eat up too much precious time. Although there is a lot of good information in this book and it's obviously an earnest effort, we did not find it very useful. If you want to hike or, per the authors' distinction, walk, in Tuscany and Umbria, and have a car, this can be one source of many to help you out, but you need other resources. We got some good info at an information center at the base of Orvieto that led to the best hike of our trip, but note that information centers seem to be closed for unknown reasons frequently. Next time, we plan to do more research, learn a little more Italian, learn more about the CAI system in general, and buy more maps and resources before we go.

I bought this book and used it to plan out part of my honeymoon. It was the sort of thing I was looking for, and I've recommended it to several friends. We did some great walks from this book, and ate at some fantastic restaurants recommended in it. The walks we did were beautiful, and we really enjoyed picnicking along the way. We stayed at one of the agriturismos recommended in the book, in San Donato (near San Gimignano), and it was everything the authors described and more. The proprietor does not speak English, but between our stumbling Italian and the help of English-speaking Italian guests, we were able to work things out. Not only did he do our laundry for us, but he gave us a bottle of wine produced on his farm as a parting gift. A wonderful experience, which we would never have had without this book.

I first discovered this book on a trip to Italy in 1999, and after my first walk I was hooked. The walk (Lamole Ring walk) took me to a place I never would have found on my own, and the experience of visiting this lovely off-the-beaten-track hamlet and its beautiful surrounding countryside on foot turned out to be the highlight of my vacation. The restaurant recommended (the only one in Lamole) was also one of the best I've ever eaten in, and was at the same time friendly and not terribly expensive.
I used the book extensively when I returned in 2003, doing seven more of the walks (mostly in the "Southern Tuscany" section) and they have all been splendid. However, I encountered several changes (more on the restaurant side than the actual walking side, though there were also some of those), and was hoping the authors would do a new edition by the time I was next lucky enough to be going to Italy. I think I was probably one of the first people to use the new edition when I went this September (2004) and I am happy to report it was excellent! I drove first to Lamole (where - in spite of another reviewer here who must have been looking for an American-style parking garage - there is no problem whatsoever in parking your car: it's just a tiny hamlet and you can park anywhere you like) and found the restaurant to be still at the top of its form, still friendly and unpretentious. The walk has been improved in that formerly there was a stretch on the road (admittedly untrafficked, but road nonetheless) which has now been replaced with a shortcut through the woods. After my walk I drove up to hotel/hostel/restaurant on top of San Michele, and spent the night there, amidst the sighing evergreens there at the top of the mountain. Sublime!
One further observation: Don't buy the old edition! Amazon only shows the old edition unless you type "2005 edition" into your search!!!