Day 5 & 6: Orvieto, Dogs and the Road to Bolsena
Day 5
Orvieto, Dogs and the Pursuit of a Decent Sandwich
The Shower Shuffle
I awoke to a sunny morning at the Agri and did my ablutions.
The shower, while not the death-trap bath combo, had a sort of odd touch.
The shower door would not close properly, so it eased open, jabbing you in the back as you showered. It had a sort of odd cantilever closure which no longer quite closed.
It meant that a pleasant shower became a sort of artificial pose. Your right hand tried to adjust the heat regulator while your left arm pointed backwards to hold the door shut.
You might say it was a sort of sand-shuffle pose, sometimes done by those mimicking Egyptians back in vaudeville days.
Having consumed a breakfast of a white boiled egg, Yorkshire brew—created by convincing the kitchen I needed hot water—the ever-so-sweet croissant and various flans, I was ready to go.
There was also a kind of goo like egg, flipped over on itself. A liquid omelette, perhaps? And some ham.
It was filling and did the trick.
Back to Orvieto: The Etruscans
I decided to return to Orvieto to see the delights of the Etruscan museum.
This area of Italy, all the way over to the west coast, is rich with Etruscan sites.
I had also thought they possessed a sort of mystical quality, reflected in names like Tarquinia or Saturnia.
Back in the age of the Grand Tour, I am sure that picking up antiquities and roving about the countryside in places like this was the mandatory finishing school for the lorded gentry.
All the vices that accompanied those with money presumably also attached themselves to places with names that suggested a sort of opium- and alcohol-fuelled holiday.
But back to the museum opposite the cathedral at Orvieto.
Of course, fifth-century BC urns and sarcophagi are not everyone’s cup of tea. I doubt the flash-man type cared two hoots about heritage.
This museum doesn’t do the English bit particularly well either. Not that I hold it against them. However, a lot of the tourists speak English, and I guess the locals get the museum trip for free—and have done it already.
The collection was assembled by Conte Claudio Faina.
Observing even a few of the finds on display gives you an appreciation of the craftsmanship and endeavour of the people who made them.
It’s dry, but necessary to preserve, even in its somewhat uncreative form.
My ticket to the cathedral and the museum also included the room beneath the main cathedral.
I missed it.
The Sandwich and the Dogs
I returned to the Agriturismo with a sandwich I had bought.
Norcia is famed for its pork and wild boar, and the lady who fashioned this monster sandwich may well have killed its contents. I think she cut through the pork with gusto.
It was a real doorstop in ciabatta bread, with oil on it—my request instead of butter.
Unfortunately, the lady owner of the Agri has two dogs who like porcini as well.
The owner’s husband has another dog, which does not like me. Or perhaps it does not like anyone.
The combination of the two makes what might have been a pleasant lunch for anyone into a circus of barking dogs, with one of the two racing hounds eyeing up my sandwich.
One consequence of the battle for the sandwich is that the greyhound sees off the husband’s barking dog.
It therefore gets a reward of a few pieces of porcini.
A pecking—or biting—order has now been established.
The thoroughbred greyhound takes precedence over the Heinz 57, who might have been a rescue dog. I think well of him, even if he barks annoyingly.
Third Time Lucky: The Leather-Bound Books
I decided to drive up to Orvieto again and see if the shop selling the leather books I might paint in was open.
I had looked previously. Twice now.
It’s quite a hill climb from the car park. Maybe 500–600 feet of altitude gained each time.
By good fortune, the shop, called Koine, was open. The owner, Elda, gave me a better deal for cash on two leather books with paper.
Happy days. Third time lucky.
We chatted about specific binding and this and that.
The previous leather books I had bought had interleaving, as you might find in a photo album.
Ideally, I wanted this, and in A3.
I found something that reminded me a little of the leather-bound book I had bought thirteen years earlier, which I ultimately used for crayon work in the Pacific.
The more I look retrospectively at this pre-Covid 2019 work, the more I like its spontaneity and simplicity.
There I am, critiquing my own work positively.
It shows how things go.
A Present for Finn
Anyhow, I left and looked at the various shops up in town.
One sold baby clothes and children’s clothes.
As Elspeth now had baby Finn—some four months old, I think—I decided to have a look.
Having purchased two small bits of clothing, the elderly lady wrapped them in some paper I chose. It had cartoon bumblebees on it.
She placed a bow on it by scoring the matching yellowish tape.
A small transaction, but a pleasant one.
The Best-Value Burger of the Trip
It was nearing teatime—or at least it could be construed that way.
I was drawn back to the same porcine shop.
It advertised burgers and beer on a small, no-nonsense terrace.
It was 6.30 pm, and I decided to take the plunge.
The Moretti beer and the crispy bun with a superb classic burger were probably the best meal of the whole trip.
They weren’t, actually. But it was the best value for the quality served up.
The burger had nothing on it apart from the crisping of the bun with olive oil.
It cost €12, including the large bottle of beer.
The Insurance Mess
I ambled back to the Agri and had to deal with the horrible French insurance mess, which had carried on throughout the journey.
I have concluded many things about insurance on this trip.
While the concept of insurance is great, I find the delivery extremely challenging—for the customer.
They take in the dosh, and the customer gets royally screwed.
The Agri in the evening isn’t the devil-may-care sort of place you might presume it could be.
It’s rather dark reddish in colour and cold.
Day 6
From Orvieto to Bolsena: Dogs, Politics and Thermal Indignities
Breakfast with the Dogs
The next morning is upon me, and breakfast beckons before I head off.
I confess I am now disconcerted by the dogs arriving at the place.
The odd bark breaks the cloister-like atmosphere, and they mostly seem to take a dislike to the presence of other dogs. This results in more barking and quarrelling.
World news is difficult to escape.
You realise the Orange Jerk is causing more mayhem.
Some Canadians in the porcini shop mentioned how tens of thousands of people are being put out of work in Canada because of American tariffs. They are further convinced by Carney, an über-intelligent prime minister standing up to the Jerk.
I am with Carney and despise the Jerk.
Americans at Breakfast
We are joined at breakfast by a clutch of Americans from Minnesota.
I’m sorry, but with the dog now doing nothing particularly, and the Americans simply being their same dumb-arse selves, I am not inclined to eat in the same room.
Whether I am completely losing it, I don’t know. But I just don’t see the compulsion to have your dog with you while you are eating.
Nor can I see why Americans want to come to little old Europe.
Why don’t they go to Moscow, for example?
I have no desire to go to America or see anyone American.
Whether I am succumbing to a sort of illogical anti-American sentiment, brought on by the misinformation of the Jerk, I don’t know.
I just don’t find anything uplifting about their culture.
I gather that technology supplied to Ukraine by Elon is being downgraded, so that more missiles kill more Ukrainians or destroy more energy infrastructure.
Ukrainians, as observed in Preveza, are themselves hard to differentiate from Russians.
Generally, if they have escaped the slaughter back home, they are sporting Hugo Boss shirts and shoes and have humongous watches to match their own enormous scale.
Think of Kyiv as a Viking settlement all those years back, leaving you with giant Slav-type bodies, tall in stature and with short hair.
This is as far from demure as you can possibly get.
What Should I Write About the Agri?
What should I write about the Agri?
If you don’t mind dogs barking, fighting and stealing food, you might just find this place okay-ish.
The technology that keeps asking you to pay, or threatens to get rid of your room, together with the €20 fine if you arrive early, doesn’t reflect the lady who does the breakfast and cleaning.
They are nice and accommodating people.
It’s a machine, and the popularity of Orvieto renders the Agri owners impervious, I think.
They don’t have time to think beyond the money merry-go-round.
Or they are simply such dog lovers that they don’t think they can do anything wrong.
It’s a dog-centric existence.
The Road to Bolsena: A Turner Landscape
Anyhow, I head off for Lake Bolsena, which means crossing the valley.
It’s around ten o’clock, and there is a very fine haze—a mist. It is Turner-esque in its magical quality.
It really is something, with the majestic profile of the cliffs on which Orvieto sits silhouetted against an ethereal orange glow.
The mist makes it look even more romanticised: soft-focus, like a lady’s perfumery advertisement.
The scenery is beyond bucolic.
Some hikers are clutching their poles as they look over the valley, with its ancient church, various farm buildings, rich fields, olive trees and vineyards.
I don’t know where the term Etruria comes from, but this is ancient and beautiful.
A sort of Nirvana meets Narnia—Narni, even—meets the pearly gates of heaven in a paid-for voluntary-euthanasia clinic in Switzerland, as some opera plays out your last breath on this beautiful earth.
As I wind from Orvieto to Bolsena village, the trees sometimes flank the route with great crowns on deeply ridged trunks of grey and burnt sienna.
You could not do better at Kew Gardens!
The landscape—even the rich chocolate-brown of a ploughed field with dappled sunlight falling on it—is a sort of masterwork.
For sure, Hockney in the East Riding and Hockney in Brittany would be outdone by the reality of this Umbrian-Tuscan delight.
Breaking Free from the Sat Nav
My modern Google Map draws me on towards the Terme thermal baths I visited in May.
But I am not for doing what my programme has suggested.
I will break the dependence and re-ignite the human driving the machine.
I will instead head for the restaurant where Ross and I stopped near Bolsena.
My aged human grey matter can feel its way around the lake until the telltale switchback appears, with the lake and the name Capriccio, meaning whim or fancy.
The name really suits the occasion—and did so previously.
Capriccio: A Moment of Tranquillity
Pulling up at the place, it is 11.00 am, far too early for lunch.
But the sun is shining on the exact table Ross and I occupied previously.
The table is five metres from the gently fringing Lake Bolsena, where the sun strikes the water like a coat of metal from The Lord of the Rings, or the point where Excalibur might emerge from the lake in John Boorman’s film of the same name.
The warmth and the 180-degree view of mirrored agate blue are mesmerising.
Water birds dip their beaks into the purity of the scene while a fisherman rows his boat some 400 metres out.
No engines.
Simple solemnity in this tranquil
David Jackson
19.10.2026