and refreshment; a meeting point for trivia where you could still meet a farmer with a loaf of bread under his arm, an onion in his hand, and the neck of a small wine bottle peeping out of his pocket.
We now walk past a farmstead further along the road and down along the cart track through an olive grove. These tracks can become muddy after some rain and are again better suited for cartwheels and the cloven hoof. Until a few years ago one could still meet beasts of burden tramping along here, sturdy white oxen, with slow, swaying bodies, great beasts already worshipped two thousand years ago as the incarnation of the earth-gods.
And to those also, O Lord, Thy humble beasts, who with us bear the burden and heat of the day, and offer their guileless lives for the well-being of their countries, we supplicate Thy great tenderness of heart.
At the end of this first stretch we head towards the wood, avoiding the right-hand turn downhill. Near this spot we can see the location where scenes from “A Room with a View” were filmed.
The walk through the wood is brief. In the morning a dew-laden spider’s web lays itself across our face and a keen eye can find regurgitated owl pellets of slimy fur and half-digested bone. The end the path comes to another old, crestfallen farmhouse with a yard and outbuildings. We walk round it, down between rugged dry walls and along a track covered with Summer dust waiting for September winds to make a sally and lay bare its stony humps again. After 10 minutes uphill we step onto a narrow asphalt road.
Downhill to the right is the roadside church of San Lorenzo and across the valley are the open face stone quarries of Maiano.
A few minutes down the road is the haughty castle of