Day 4 Sunday

We continued road walking to Seggiano.

At Seggiano, we took what should have been a minor white road only to find a house in the way! They can do these things in Italy. We turned back and followed a slightly longer way round and at the other end of the white road there was another house built across it. We then walked on to Pescina - a very unremarkable place.

We lunched at a forest refuge area. I checked the ongoing route carefully with a route on a wooden board but we clearly went horrendously wrong in the forest. Instead of emerging on a road with Mt. Amiata to the west of us, it was some way to the south. We'd taken a wrong direction from the picnic site. After one or two attempts to head towards Abbiade S Salvatori, we gave up and walked to Vivo d'Orcia, a one horse dorp of a place, very sleepy, a bit shabby with mostly unmade roads.

We booked into Hotel Amiata, a strange place indeed. Our room was decidedly cold - Nigel went straight to bed with all his clothes on and this was only late afternoon! I thought a shower might be warming but couldn't seem to find it in the little en suite loo with wash basin. I then looked up and saw a shower rose in the middle of the ceiling. The room itself was a shower room! Of course, everything got wet but at least I had the sense to move the loo roll outside. I am sure the room was an electrical nightmare.

The evening meal served by the eccentric proprietor and cooked by his equally strange wife was interesting to say the least. We started with mushroom soup, served with a spoon and fork. It consisted of pieces of bread with a vaguely mushroomy stock and bits of mushroom - a veritable mush but definitely not soup as we know it. I had never before eaten soup with a fork! This was followed by a sort of spaghetti bolognese, followed by slices of rare beef with gravy, both served cold with artichoke.