About Abruzzo

Tagged: Gran Sasso

Rocca Calascio

Mountains / Province of L'Aquila / Uncategorized

Rocca Calascio

Beside a turn in the zig-zag road to Rocca Calascio, some thoughtful person has organized the ideal picnic spot. Under a bower of ivy and spring flowers is a table and benches, just waiting to be used. Only we don’t have a picnic. Déjeuner sur L’herbe Never mind, in the borgo of Calascio we find a bar where the owner does a line in sardonic wit (free) and sandwiches (reasonably priced).  We take our sandwiches out to a grassy promontory. Though the sun is shining, the breeze from the Gran Sasso carries a memory of snow. We are at 1400 metres above sea level and the world is at our...

Popoli 0

Mountains / Province of Pescara

Picturesque Popoli

Bears and other perils Just outside Popoli we pass a quaint road sign alerting us to the possibility of bears crossing. Having once had a near miss with a deer on the motorway, and risked a collision with a kangaroo in the Australian outback, I shouldn’t be complacent. But somehow the idea that a bear might amble out of the woods to cross the road strikes me as comical. And yet. We are on the border between the two great national parks of Abruzzo, the Majella and the Gran Sasso, the habitat of about 50 members of the orso marsicano species. Sightings are rare but in certain periods, or...

Montesilvano Colle from below 0

Province of Pescara / The Coast

Montesilvano Colle

and a tale of Scottish soldiers Long before the town spilled down the hillside and onto the coastal plain, there was Montesilvano Colle, or ‘Lu Colle’ (the hill) for short. At that time Montesilvano meant what it said: wooded hill. It was then a drowsy hamlet, nestling among thick pine woods that crept all the way down to the sea. Now on the plain the trees have been replaced by a forest of apartment buildings which continue to reproduce at a terrifying rate. ‘Colle’, though, relatively untouched by the building boom of the sixties and the 2000s, maintains the easy-going charm of a country borgo. It is most pleasant to...