Walking and Eating in Tuscany and Umbria

Rating:
Summary: Finally a new edition of this classic!
Review: I first discovered this book on a trip to Italy in 1999, and after my first walk I was hooked. The walk (Lamole Ring walk) took me to a place I never would have found on my own, and the experience of visiting this lovely off-the-beaten-track hamlet and its beautiful surrounding countryside on foot turned out to be the highlight of my vacation. The restaurant recommended (the only one in Lamole) was also one of the best I've ever eaten in, and was at the same time friendly and not terribly expensive.
I used the book extensively when I returned in 2003, doing seven more of the walks (mostly in the "Southern Tuscany" section) and they have all been splendid. However, I encountered several changes (more on the restaurant side than the actual walking side, though there were also some of those), and was hoping the authors would do a new edition by the time I was next lucky enough to be going to Italy. I think I was probably one of the first people to use the new edition when I went this September (2004) and I am happy to report it was excellent! I drove first to Lamole (where - in spite of another reviewer here who must have been looking for an American-style parking garage - there is no problem whatsoever in parking your car: it's just a tiny hamlet and you can park anywhere you like) and found the restaurant to be still at the top of its form, still friendly and unpretentious. The walk has been improved in that formerly there was a stretch on the road (admittedly untrafficked, but road nonetheless) which has now been replaced with a shortcut through the woods. After my walk I drove up to hotel/hostel/restaurant on top of San Michele, and spent the night there, amidst the sighing evergreens there at the top of the mountain. Sublime!
One further observation: Don't buy the old edition! Amazon only shows the old edition unless you type "2005 edition" into your search!!!


Rating:
Summary: Four Couples, Ten Unique and Wonderful Walks
Review: I planned a walking trip to Umbria and Tuscany based on this excellent and thorough guidebook. My wife and I and three other couples, all friends and all in our 50's and 60's, spent two weeks in May of 2000 walking three of the inteneraries in Umbria and seven in Tuscany. The experience was, arguably, the most satisfying vacation any of us has ever made. Fields of red poppies, yellow buttercups,and a vibrant bouquet of many other flowering plants and trees colored our surroundings. The book guided us through dramaticaly changing scenes from stately vineyards, to deep woods, to beautiful medieval and renaissance villages, towns, and abbeys, to mountain pastures and fields of flowers, and to a procession of stunning views. Walking gave our encounters with the places and people of our trip an exhilerating immediacy and intimacy that we would have otherwise missed. Buy the book, make the trip, do the walks, and be entranced. (The Lamole and the San Michele to Radda walks need updating because of property and road changes, but you can still find your way.)

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful and thorough walking guide
Review: I was inspired by this guidebook to do 4 days of walks in Tuscany this spring -- from Buonconvento to Montalcino, Sant'Antimo via Ripa D'Orcia to Bagno Vignoni, and on to Pienza. I had previously done the Montepulciano-Pienza walk. Every walk I took was wonderful and I can't recommend this way of seeing Italy highly enough! There is no way I could have done these walks without this book, which I found to be very accurate. There were a few places where I had minor trouble interpreting the directions, but was never really lost, and I found the maps very helpful. Proprieters of the places I stayed or stopped for a meal were sometimes amused, but always pleased, when they heard I was on foot. I also had the Lonely Planet guidebook to walking/hiking in Italy, but found that to be much less helpful and less detailed. It was clear to me that Lasdun and Davis had done painstakingly thorough background research. (i.e., had walked every trail more than once, and had tried every restaurant -- obviously a great hardship, especially in the spring and fall!) It will take me years to do all the walks in this book that call out to me, but I'm already thinking of my next trip (in grape harvest season this time).

Rating:
Summary: A good guide to see a different side of Tuscany
Review: In a recent trip to Tuscany we were able to take one of the walks described in the book. This was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. When used with a good map, the directions are good. The trails are easily traveled (my map had many other trails, but some of them were overgrown) but not overused (we did not see any other tourists the whole day). Following this guide helped us see a side of Tuscany we would have missed otherwise, and gave us stories that made other friends who have visited Italy jealous.

Rating:
Summary: A good guide to see a different side of Tuscany
Review: In a recent trip to Tuscany we were able to take one of the walks described in the book. This was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. When used with a good map, the directions are good. The trails are easily traveled (my map had many other trails, but some of them were overgrown) but not overused (we did not see any other tourists the whole day). Following this guide helped us see a side of Tuscany we would have missed otherwise, and gave us stories that made other friends who have visited Italy jealous.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent and fulfilling guide
Review: Last June I left for Florence as part of a semester abroad with my school, and I found this wonderful book quite by chance. I brought it with me and three of us set out for the Casentino. This excursion was so memorable. My friends and I will never forget the breathtaking views and colors of the woods as we walked to Castagno d'Andrea in the setting sun. The bramble-edged road and the low shrubby patches of forest interspersed with meadows are etched in my mind.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent and fulfilling guide
Review: Last June I left for Florence as part of a semester abroad with my school, and I found this wonderful book quite by chance. I brought it with me and three of us set out for the Casentino. This excursion was so memorable. My friends and I will never forget the breathtaking views and colors of the woods as we walked to Castagno d'Andrea in the setting sun. The bramble-edged road and the low shrubby patches of forest interspersed with meadows are etched in my mind.

Rating:
Summary: Not if you have a car...
Review: My wife and I just returned from a two-week trip to Tuscany and Umbria where we had planned to do several walks in this book. Although the book does not even pretend to address tourists traveling by car, we assumed that would not be a problem, and we were wrong. For example, we set out from Lucca to do #13, a walk in the Garfagnana. Naive American drivers need to know that the road to the trailhead, while beautiful, is a heavy industrial corridor with a large number of trucks as well as cars driving to defy death at high speed on a road that is often only wide enough for one vehicle, usually with no shoulder, often skirting sharply around mountain switch-backs with steep drop-offs. Traffic frequently stops as truck and bus drivers try to figure out who is going to back up, and how, to let the other go by. If you have a car, absolutely only consider doing this walk on the weekend. Also, we attempted #2, the Lamole ring walk. On a typical mid-October day, overcast and drizzling, there was absolutely no place to leave the car, which was very disappointing considering the effort to get there. The one walk we did do, #23, the Monteriggioni ring walk, was ok, but a very long stretch of it, from just after Abbadia a Isola to C. Giubileo, is continuously up a steep grade on a gravel road, mostly with minimal views, and gets to be a real drag. Also, and possibly not the authors' fault, the directions fail near the presumptive end when you encounter CAI signs with different numbers than the authors indicate, and trail options that don't quite fit the description. We got lost and went much further southeast than we should have, adding a pleasant enough but unplanned hour to the trip. Also, the Montauto spur access is completely overgrown now with thick, high thorn bushes at least 20 to 30 feet deep behind the well near the beginning. In sum, I was left wondering how big the target audience for this book is. Although we had a car, we were told that bus schedules are not particularly reliable outside the larger cities. After spending two weeks in the Tuscan and Umbrian countryside, it appears to me that, with the amount of time typical travelers have, the hassle and waste of time taking (and waiting for) busses to and from trailheads away from the major centers would just eat up too much precious time. Although there is a lot of good information in this book and it's obviously an earnest effort, we did not find it very useful. If you want to hike or, per the authors' distinction, walk, in Tuscany and Umbria, and have a car, this can be one source of many to help you out, but you need other resources. We got some good info at an information center at the base of Orvieto that led to the best hike of our trip, but note that information centers seem to be closed for unknown reasons frequently. Next time, we plan to do more research, learn a little more Italian, learn more about the CAI system in general, and buy more maps and resources before we go.

Rating:
Summary: New Updated Edition Available Now
Review: The original edition of this book, written nearly ten years ago, needed
updating, so we went back to Italy, this time with two young children.
We've updated the original walks and restaurant reviews and added some new
walks and locations. If you are thinking of buying the book, make sure you
have the newer edition (both editions are available on Amazon, and the newer
one is also cheaper). To order the new edition type "walking and eating
2005" (without the quotation marks) into Amazon's search box.

If you have any questions about the book, please feel free to email me at:
[e-mail]. Over the years we have had so many letters from
people about the book, saying what a difference it made to their holiday. We
hope you enjoy it.

Rating:
Summary: Great walks - great book!
Review: This book is for anyone who wants to fully experience the Italian countryside the only way it can be fully experienced - on foot. Instead of merely viewing the fantastic landscapes from afar, we were able to get out there and get among it. This kind of experience can mean the difference between an ordinary postcard vacation and something truly memorable. The food in this area is heavenly - all the more so when you've completed a healthy walk!