Un altro mondo

West from Rocca Calascio

Abruzzo is quite mountainous. There are those peaks around Grand Sasso in the north, in the Grand Sasso National Park, the other main group is to be found in the Majella National Park more southerly, where San Tommaso, one of a number of places in Italy so-named by pope somebody the something after Henry VIII had martyred Thomas Beckett is to be found. The village is located about a third of the way up Majella, so to get to most other places, you have first to decend a few hundred meters to a town called Scafa where you can join the autostrada if you're going somewhere in a hurry or a main road if you are staying more local or aren't in a rush.

The Mille Miglia (the thousand mile road race, last run fifty years ago) used to pass through here, the drivers having just turned west to cross the country to Rome before turning back north to complete their mad few hours back in Brescia. Gemma's dad used to cycle down from San Tommaso (where cars of any type were rarely seen) to witness those special people hurtling through that town.

Turning left at Scafa leads you along a valley and between two big hills to a town called Popoli. Turn right there and wind back up, higher than San Tommaso and slightly weirdly, find yourself on a massive flat plane. Driving its length will take about half an hour and will lead you to L'Aquila. That road is mainly dead straight and driving along it gives me the feeling that I must have a special, other wordly destination.

This time we decided to check out some of the villages that cling to the hills that surround the plane. One such is Calascio, where an ancient, mostly ruined castle commands views, on a clear day, all the way back to Majella to the south and for a long way in every other direction. We arrived there in our Fiat Idea 1.3 diesel having driven up some roads that were precarious enough to have caused raised voices in the car, despite my crawling along in second gear, the absence of barriers between the edge of the road and the sheer drops being the main problem. Eventually you arrive in a dust bowl of a small car park also occupied by the village bins. From there by foot you climb steeply with expectations of seeing very little activity, the first houses and many of the others too have been abandoned for what looks like a long time. As you climb, through the gaps between those run down homes to your left, the view makes you giddy.

Looking north from Rocca Calascio

Don't be surprised, when you find a tiny cafe, perched on the cliff, with a quintet (Il Quintetto a fiata della Baronia) playing Hinemith's Kleine Kammermusik opus 24, no. 2. Stoop to enter, order your espresso, retire to a table outside and wonder about how things can sometimes be so extraordinary. Shake off the emotions you have been sitting in and climb the last bit to the castle itself. This is our other-worldly destination, a bridge between the prosaic and the astral.

Looking south from Rocca Calascio (that's Majella topped with snow)

p.s. I thought I had better just check my Mille Miglia facts before publishing this post and have spent a most enjoyable half hour surfing through related sites. At first I was concerned that there was some confusion over the exact route and that Gemma's dad might have been referring to a 16 mile street circuit that used to exist in the Pescara environs but I was pleased to be able to confirm that that infamous race did pass along that exact piece of road. A fact which, for me, really turns the evocativeness knob right up, is that the route of the race actually included the road across that plane. Next time I am there, I can imagine Sterling Moss passing me at 170mph (a speed the cars often reached on the straights in those days) in his cocoon of noise and wind, dirty faced, his eyes piercing those leather rimmed goggles, calculating in a moment the value of the hazard that I represent, before forgetting me forever, vanishing in a vortex of dust.

It turns out that there were a number of routes (click here),used for the race between 1927 and 1957. From 1949 they all passed between Pescara and L'Aquila in one or other direction.

Il Rifugio della Rocca (click here) is where those concerts are held, if you happen to be passing.