High Point Of The Day

It probably seems strange, even sad, that the high point of my day is the journey to work. What’s more we’re only talking about ten minutes because, although it’s a half-hour’s drive from our village of Gualdo Cattaneo to the city of Foligno where we rent an office, the best part, the secret, unsigned short cut, is only a small portion of it.

Every morning the journey starts in much the same way. With the car engine running, I close the wrought iron gates of our garden then scramble aboard trying to remember not to turn the ignition again.

“That’s how you burn out the starter-motor!” my husband hisses.

Our two golden retrievers, who accompany us everywhere, are in the back of the car, panting in anticipation of the breeze through the window and the excitement of the view. One of them can’t be prevented from jumping in the hatch at the earliest opportunity. The other one, whom we nickname ‘Red Robbo’ at these times because he appears to be consulting some obscure rule book about his rights viz-a-viz hot cars, will only get in after routine prevarication and persuasion.

We grind into motion, throwing up loose gravel on the steep little road. Our neighbour and former owner of our house may be on his land and if so we wave to him. I remember my father’s adage about people he didn’t want to talk to:

“Wave vigorously with your foot on the accelerator,” he advised.

The road descends rapidly. By going the short cut we miss the breathtaking view of the medieval hill-top village which is Gualdo Cattaneo proper, perched on its rocky promontory, but we still catch sight of the mountains. At this time of the year they look hot and grey beyond the parched fields, but in winter and spring they shine out like moons with their covering of snow.

Shortly after the first turn, we pass under a belt of deciduous trees. This is the ‘pine marten place’ because one memorable spring night a pine marten stood in the road looking at us with bright green reflective eyes.

A little further on it’s ‘the hoopoe place’. Many times we’ve seen a whirl of black and white feathers as one of these exotic birds flew away from the roadside where it had been feeding. Once or twice, catching it static, we’ve been able to see its noble pinky-brown crest.

After a further couple of turns and a descent through an olive grove, Gaglioli comes into view, a tiny village with one street flanked by a handful of houses. Somewhere along the line it seems to have assumed a grandeur out of proportion to its size. For one thing its name on road signs is larger than that of other more deserving places. For another it effectively has a by-pass because the road goes round it. I’ve heard tell that there is more life in Gaglioli than in the whole of the much more sizeable Gualdo Cattaneo. But there is a slightly sinister air about it, brooding there on its crag above the steep wooded valley. This does not stop us, however, from coming up with ever more outlandish jokes.

“If you had a street party in Gaglioli you’d have to be sure to tell people where it was happening,” we quip.

The metropolis of Gaglioli, we call it, and I always peer to see if I can see any sign of life .

It was on the Gaglioli by-pass that I spotted a snake one morning, basking on the asphelt. It was long and thin (even by snake standards) and black with olive green on it. I haven’t been able to identify it subsequently, not even so as to know whether it was poisonous or not.

At this point the really magical part of the journey begins. When we first discovered the route, I could never remember any stages in it. It seemed to blur into one seamless experience as if we had entered a time warp. The amniotic wash of greenery is entirely absorbing until one emerges the other end. However I will try to pick out a few details that may serve to demonstrate the charm of it.

The road is just wide enough in most places for two cars to pass while polishing each other’s paintwork. Here and there a fence reveals itself, but mostly there is a feeling of driving right through the middle of a natural landscape of rocks and scrub, trees and glades. The steepest part has a fifteen percent gradient as well as vicious switchback curves, and it is thoroughly exhilarating to drive provided you keep applying the brake. There is a secretive little stream at the bottom of the first valley, from whose overhanging trees a nightingale regaled us with its song every night for over a week last Spring when we were coming home.

The flowers are the best feature of all. It is like driving down the middle of an artist’s palette because on every side are bursts of yellow, splashes of pink, lakes of scarlet, pointillism in blue. The foliage of the trees is immensely varied as well, from the dusky green of oaks to the bright children’s-paint-box green of young acacias. Sun and shade alternate, softly rather than starkly. Half way up a slope a spring discharges a constant trickle of water over the tarmac of the road surface.

After the first valley there is a small rise before the plunge into the second. One has to make an effort of awareness, though, because the meanderings of the road are so hypnotic that one can easily forget whereabouts one has got to. More shady trees. A sheer rock face. A glimpse of a meadow that looks as if it came straight out of Paradise.

Finally we surface by an old church where we once saw two porcupines crossing the road together. A charm of goldfinches puffs out of the verge-side grass and bounces twittering into the trees. A field of sunflowers, every face turned in the same direction, gazes in adulation at some invisible spectacle. Garden flowers appear: roses, summer jasmine, oleanders.

“What’s your favourite colour of oleander?” I ask my husband.

“I like the dark red ones,” he decides.

I like them all. And the mix of them. And the fact that each one is more beautiful than the last.

No foot on the accelerator, I speed downhill towards Bevagna and beyond it, Foligno. It’s all over for another day.