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Walking in the Casentino Forest Park has now become a pleasant habit. This is the park’s website with many directions for visiting it.
If I can’t be away one night, but I have enough time, on the weekend I do the hour and a half I need to get there. If I have more time, I also load the tent and do a couple of days in nature.
Here for example are the articles from my experience in Gods Way.
In this link instead is the article in English, which I wrote for the international website voluntouring.org.
The Casentino Forest Park
The Casentino Forest Park is a marvel and is beautifully maintained, but so are some of the surrounding areas. I am not going to mention the most beautiful trails because they are often too crowded while there are others just as worthy. There are some spectacular views but the reason why after a few weeks of having to neglect it I almost feel withdrawal from it is the woods. For this very reason I often go alone or, if it happens with a person. Sometimes I go with groups but I particularly suffer from the inability to enjoy the sound of nature’s silence.
In a group with a guide, the snowshoe outings and the one to listen to the cooing of the deer were memorable; sometimes you also make interesting acquaintances and indeed after one outing I even got back two dates that turned out to be fruitful. Particularly nice are the outings I sometimes do with a Languages Exchange group where in theory one should also practice English, but sometimes one could only speak in dialect.
Out and about in the woods with Karl Marx
As for the outings I have been on with two people, there is always the risk of going too hard or too slow compared to the other although the biggest risk for me is when I am with someone who is too much of a photographer or likes long stops. I like to proceed perhaps slowly and rather stop on the way back for a beer, ice cream or even lunch, there are excellent trattorias in those parts.
One of the most enjoyable outings was 3 of us, me, a friend and her adorable little dog named Karl and last name Marx. I don’t know if it was because he was still young, particularly lively or his first such experience, it was a lot of fun. I won’t say every meter, but he almost turned toward us to express his enthusiasm for the many unusual smells, the many animal tracks, and of course the infinite number of trees to take a leak on.
Issues in the tent
Every now and then I try to do one or 2 nights in the Casentino forests, but also in the Emilian or Marche Apennines. In this way I can do different tours and optimize the time seen. I happened to do a weekend at the end of May in the Reggio Emilia Apennines, but I had to give up the hypothesized trails because there was still snow. I sound reckless, but for trekking if I go away alone I am careful, I try to do easy trails and not only with good weather conditions, I even avoid if it has rained in the previous days.
Sleeping in a campground, but if not in summer even in a hotel or lodge, after a nice hike and the next morning being able to do it again right away without taking the car is a great thing for me. In the summer I also really like camping because a way to escape the mugginess I have at home, but of course it doesn’t always go smoothly.
For example, I had to give up the comfortable inflatable mattresses, the tall and very comfortable ones. Several times I had found myself on the ground in the middle of the night. Being a very respectful guy, I never felt like waking up the whole camp to repair or re-inflate the mattress (rather noisy procedures). Once I carried no less than two mattresses with me and stacked them. Nice to sleep on high and convinced that if one was deflated, at worst I would have the other. It seems unbelievable, but at 3 a.m. I woke up because they were both on the floor.
Never forget the little pill
One of my plans is to do a little at a time as many stages as possible of the Sentiero Italia, the set of trails from Trieste through the Alps and then all the Apennines, with stops also in the ridges of Sicily and Sardinia. I had assumed two nights camping near the Passo della Futa, between Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna, and starting from there do the trail east one day with a return and go the other way the next day, also considering enjoying a nice dinner in a typical trattoria.
Perhaps I caught cold, or perhaps I ate something bad with my intestines still stressed from the recent trip to Africa. So much so that I had to eat dinner on the fly and neglected the diner to quickly head to the bathroom and then to the campsite.
When I had been assigned the pitch I never imagined when that very time I would appreciate the proximity to the facilities and the beauty of them. Usually in these fortunately very rare instances I knead, but that time I was devoid of it. Convinced that I had fulfilled all my physical duties, I went to sleep but in spite of myself I soon woke up; I had wet myself without even realizing it! You can imagine how unpleasant it was; among other things fearing it might happen again I even made an effort not to fall back asleep and still at dawn I went home, giving up the second trek.
Not just Casentino Forest Park, but the entire Emilia-Romagna Apennines
Among the many weekends in the mountains, one that I particularly enjoyed was the one at the Cerreto Pass where I also made the climb up Mount the Naked to which I aspired both because of the name and the fact that from there one can clearly see the Ligurian Sea. But still in the province of Reggio Emilia, the ride from the parts of Pietra di Bissmantova was unforgettable.
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