Narrowboatboy’s Big, Bad Blog...Narrowboat & Travel blog based on Lancaster Canal

‘ Raccogliere le olive’ For the uninitiated, the olive harvesting in Tuscany goes on from October to December every year and peaks around tupping time, November 5th when absolutely everybody, whether they have olives or not, get out their nets, boxes, trailers and stand under their trees. It’s in their blood here and they can’t stop doing it and talking about it....everybody...everywhere! All the olives that are picked here are for processing, usually at the local frantoia, and pressed to turn them into a delicious green, peppery oil and it’s big, big business. You can forget that crap stuff you buy at the Lidl, this is the real deal. You need a few tools to do the job: Paletti = stakes for holding the edges of the net to stop the buggers rolling away. Cassetti = boxes take about 25kg and this year, with a bumper crop, one decent tree can fill 3 of these! Rete Olivastra= a bloody big net! Rastrelli = little rakes to use by hand to strip the olives off the branche...

Here you find us today in the Upper reaches of the Okavango delta... ... .through the morning mist a rare glimpse of a native hornbill and the eerie haunting call of a young lonely male Orangutan can be heard in the misty distance.... Ho..ho...only joking...not really....high up but still in Umbria. Quite atmospheric with the clouds still hanging about after all the recent rain...it’s been as wet as a tramps vest for the last few days! As the year starts to close, the wine and the oil has been pressed and bottled, the warm sunshine has retired and the vast woods have started to change to a golden colour, while large flocks of birds gather to fly off for their holidays and we find ourselves winding down with the clock... It’s quite a change from the summer and sorta feels quite sad.... Still.. .there’s more to the picture than meets the eye... . But look on the bright side....It’s Black ‘feckin’ Fridey!!.....Whoop, ‘Feckin’ Whoop!! You can’t esc...

Still on my tour of Umbria, today’s destination was the walled medieval town of Montone, a tiny hilltop commune with less than two thousand folk. It’s getting colder now but it’s lovely visiting these places at the end of the season when all the tourists have gone home! This tiny place was peaceful and quiet and incredibly clean and tidy and nothing in the way of a photo opportunity! A pleasant morning ramble up the tiny winding streets and a peek over the old walls to the bigger white topped hills in the distance and then back down to the piazza for a coffee. Today’s blog choice track is ‘Nothing in the Way’....a song by a guy calling himself, Ghostpoet off his 2015 album ‘Shedding Skin’...a great song and a great voice. Audio only I’m afraid here...enjoy. https://youtu.be/V0az9TZG9i4

Pack it up, pack it in, let me begin... Today was an autumnal stroll up to the monastery at the top of the holy mountain of Monte Corona in Umbria, past an abundance of parasol 🍄 mushrooms in what may be the last of the sunshine with my canine companions.  In the far distance I could hear the hunters ..... ...shooting at the Cinghiale in the dense woods... we plodded on... High up on the top of the hill it was built back in 1530 and it was the home of the Camal-toe monks (apparently!) until 1861  and now it’s become a ‘house of pain’ (apparently!) for the  monks that now support the brothers of Bethlehem, the Assumption and Frank Bruno!....you couldn’t make it up? But don’t take my word for it, look it up yourself like I had to here.... http://bethleem.org/ Along the way I asked myself some questions.... What is man?    What is the meaning, the aim of our life?    Which is the road to true happiness?    What, ...