Camera Clickin’ Mad in La Morra, Piedmont

Zagan the motorhome’s high on his ramps, levelled out for another night alongside the vines, this time atop a different hill, in the free official sosta at Grinzane Cavour (N44.65527, E7.98955).

The fabulous motorhome sosta at Grinzane Cavour, Piedmont

The service point at Grinzane Cavour. No water in winter, and has an ingenious grey water pipe rather than an underground grate.

I can’t claim life is frenetic here in Zagan. It’s just about the opposite at the moment. The return of the sun, warming us to low teen degrees outside and into the mid twenties inside, is having the opposite effect on me to cold-blooded Earth dwellers. I’m chilling out big style. It’s probably related to the absolutely gorgeous scenery around us, and the fact no-one else in the Langhe hills appears to be in much of a hurry either.

This morning’s brews. Supped slowly as the van pinged in the sun’s warmth.

There is the odd moment of rapid action in Team Zagan though. Once we’ve decided we’re off, then all other tasks get quickly nailed and we’re rolling off up the road still programming the sat nav as we go! This morning was no different, although this morning we knew to avoid sat nav’s default route that nasty left turn, down a van-wide 20% decline and around the corner of a building into the unknown. Fortunately Le Langhe is a small area, and the detour adds all of five minutes to the route. The roads on the whole are cracking in this area by the way – good quality and wide enough to pass the odd cement truck or tractor without losing more of that precious hair.

Cruising the roads of Le Langhe. The most dangerous thing is being distracted by the ga-ga views

La Morra has an official sosta, which I’m sure would be fab, but it comes in at €10 a night and we only needed a couple of hours day parking. Despite being an aged hilltop town, the locals have flattened off a nice large car park where we slotted Zagan before taking a walk around town (N44.63898, E7.93177).

La Morra!

Into tourist info, the helpful lady immediately clocked the camera strung over my shoulder and, handing me a map, pointed out the viewpoints. Nothing else, just the views. I wonder if she does a side-line in mind reading, since there wasn’t too much chance we’d be raiding any of the cantina for a couple of cases of Barolo. We will get some to sample, maybe from Lidl at €10 a bottle. You can get a bottle for about £10 to £13 in the UK too, but the towns here seem to charge a premium for buying at source (plus and I’m too embarrassed to go into a shop and ask for the cheapest bottle they have).

The viewpoints were, as they seem to be in all the towns here, stupendous. In every direction there are smooth, rolling hills, covered top to toe in tiny wooden posts like designer stubble. To the west and north, the Piedmont plain ends suddenly with a vertical wall of Alp, light glinting from glaciers. The temptation is to try and photograph everything, which I duly did.

View from La Morra

View from La Morra

Nippers use the piazza in La Morra as a playground – shouting the odd ‘hello’ to us

In between viewpoints I nipped into one of the many churches, my eyes assaulted by another stampede of impressions as soon as I cracked open the second door to get inside.

Baroque interior of a church in La Morra. Every inch of the interior was decorated

We’re still struggling to get email notifications working from the blog. This is how I’m currently feeling about it! Bear with us folks – it will be fixed next week, one way or another.

With a fuel light on, we opted to pop in a splash and dash in La Morra to make sure we make it to Alba tomorrow. At €1.19 a litre, in a tiny service-included fuel station, we didn’t wince too badly and asked the attendant to pop in €20. He asked me a question, to which I squinted back at him, remembering one of my few Italian phrases: mi dispiace non capisco. After a bit of confusion it became clear he was interested in Zagan, and wanted to know where he was made. Germany, I told him, as he nodded enigmatically. Afterwards, Ju pointed out the last time we were in Italy we paid closer to €1.60 a litre, gotta love a bit of deflation.

More La Morra!

Even more La Morra! We took 632 photos there. A slight exaggeration, but not much.

Out of La Morra, a 20 minute amble brought us here, the grand-sounding but tiny Grinzane Cavour. Oh, by the way, there are average speed cameras everywhere around these hills. Little blue boxes, some of the wee towns have two sets in both directions, clearly serious about slowing folks down. Pulling into the sosta here, I was stoked (man) by the sight of four Piaggio Apes in the car park. 50cc puppies, parked alongside similar-engined bikes. A wee while later the school kicked out, 16 year olds, style icons everyone, half of them lit up a cigarette within a meter of the school gate. A minute later a teacher strode out, dropped some books in his car, flicked a ciggy out, lit it and went to join the kids. I imagine this same action in the UK might see him sacked?

Ape!

Anyway, this turned out to be lunch time, providing half an hour’s entertainment for us as the kids raced the engines of scramblers, hooned up and down the road into the vines, got an Ape on two wheels (thankfully the one which has a roll bar fitted) and necked on the bench in front of us. Cracking stuff. Once they’d all gone, the place finally descending back into slumber.

More Ape!

€1100? Bargain! How do I get the puppy home though?

The town here has a rather lovely castle, which appears to now be a local museum and truffle/wine shop. After walking the grounds, our eyeballs finally starting to tire of the staggering views, we’ve come back here. The sun’s gone, it’s quickly cooling off and the heating’s on. Time for a snifter of cabernet sauvignon (sacrilege in these parts).

Tomorrow, assuming we can be induced to get up and do something, we’re off to Alba.

Cheers, Jay