Tradition and the 21st Century I know Italy's supposed to be a land of contrasts, but this is stretching it a bit. Up on the roof, Elio is bolting some massively-intimidating and probably massively-expensive electronic gizmo to the TV aerial and trying to get a line-of-sight to an antenna in Casoli which, by some process […]

It’s hard to believe now, but Abruzzo was the scene of some particularly savage fighting during the Italian Campaign of 1943/4. The area from the Sangro River up to Ortona formed the eastern edge of the formidable Gustav Line defences, hinging on the mighty Monte Cassino and while the advance northwards on the eastern side of Italy was largely the responsibility of the US Army, on the west, up through what’s now Puglia, Molise and Abruzzo, it was a campaign spearheaded by the British Eighth Army.

Neurotic ? Us ? Looking back, I wonder why we got as wound-up as we did about how the cats would react to the 1400-mile trek in the back of the car from Somerset to our new home in the hamlet of Ascigno in Abruzzo, where we'll be running a small-scale villa rental business providing […]