Lucca

I am in a grand, ancient, haunted house on a hill on the outskirts of Lucca in Italy. I have come here to write with Michael who knows the area well and suggested this crazy B and B. The ceiling is incredibly high. The floors are made of hexagonal polished tiles. The sitting room has an enormous window in it. It’s dark outside but I can see for miles across the valley towards the Appenine Mountains. The lights of the city are twinkling like sequins on Strictly!

The day started in the Aspire Lounge at Heathrow, which is the fancy British Airways hang out for people, like Michael, who are frequent fliers. It has free food. He could take a guest in with him. Why not?

It’s full of ghastly people. Of course it is. Anything which calls itself the “aspire” lounge is likely to attract people who consider themselves a cut above the rest. There were people in there drinking champagne at 9am, which felt embarrassingly ostentatious.

The plane journey wasn’t as hideous as these things often can be. I hate flying but have managed to get the abject terror I used to feel for 90% of my time in the air down to a thumping heart and sweaty palms for the first five minutes until the fasten seatbelt lights come off.

These days you don’t get anything more with BA than you do with the budget airlines. You have to pay for food and drink and it costs extra to put a bag in the hold, so everyone flies with an enormous quantity of “hand luggage” which spills out of the overhead lockers. One bloke had a suitcase and two large suit holders which he scattered liberally in overhead space around his seat. He got very angry and sarcastic with me when I crammed my case alongside his precious suit bag and tried to pick a fight until I made it abundantly clear I didn’t give a stuff!

We touched down in Pisa an hour later than expected, having sat on the runway in Heathrow for an age. It’s cold here but crisp and light, and the sun, low in the sky, had turned everything the colour of straw.

Tuscany is a very different place in the winter. It’s very green, completely unlike the tinder-dry, yellowy-brown, sunflower-filled landscapes you get here during the high summer.

This part of the region is heavily associated with the story of Pinocchio, whose writer was brought up in a small village around the corner from where we are. There are wooden statues of the character all over the place.

As the light faded, we stopped in a cafe in a charming market town called Pescia which smells of woodsmoke and is filled with the sound of bells chiming. I have respect for very few religions, but have always been rather grateful to Catholics for their tendency to jangle bells in ancient hillside towns! The Main Street looked incredibly Christmassy, with delicate white lights hovering over the road.

The cafe was filled to the brim with delicious-looking pastries and meringues. Michael had a sort of yum-yum stuffed with candied fruit and I opted for a biscuit coated in lustrous dark chocolate. We drank freshly squeezed orange juice which the man behind the counter prepared in front of us. The juice was deliciously tart. 

A little old lady was proudly hanging her paintings on the wall of the cafe. She explained that she had an exhibition of work the following week in the market place.

We drove through the winding roads in the foothills around Lucca to a spectacular restaurant where we gorged on delicious rustic pastas, salads, a local bean dish and roasted potatoes, all for an outrageously low cost. This part of the world doesn’t have the glamour of some of the other parts of Tuscany, which means it feels more real somehow. The towns and villages are a little more down-at-heel perhaps but that only adds to their charm. There are a lot of ruined and derelict buildings clinging to the river which runs through the valley. The fast-moving water made this area famous for the production of paper and, even now, you’ll be driving along a pitch black road, and suddenly see the bright lights and tall clouds of steam associated with a paper factory.

I slept like the dead last night and woke up this morning to discover the most stunning view from my bedroom window. I can literally see for miles across the whole of Lucca, which is a place I’m very much hoping to explore today.

Of course the joy is tinged with sadness. Being part of the EU brings this paradise to the finger tips of all Brits. A two hour plane journey and you’re in this magical little spot. Of course, regardless of what happens with Brexit, we’ll always only be a two hour flight away, but we will lose the right to call it part of our own community. Yet again, I find myself in mainland Europe filled with bitterness towards the people who have taken this utopia away from us.