The doors next door

After yesterday's torrential showers, in Carmine today the skies are patchy blue. More rain expected - probably arriving before the sheets are dry.

Door on the street where we live.

Photograph by B. aged 5.

I had a little nut tree...

Sixteen degrees at 8am. Bright sunshine. And up here on The Rock, a gentle laundry-drying breeze.

The other day in Conad Supermarket, Cannobio. Prime walnuts, price €8.95 per kilo. Price includes first class shipping by Noberasco some 11,000km from Argentina. 

Part of what's wrong with the world.

Today in Carmine Superiore. Just-fallen walnuts, price €0.00 per kilo. Price includes a breath of mountain air to pluck them from the tree, 15 minutes gathering, first class transport 300m down the hill from the prato, and a day on the windowsill drying in the autumn sun. 

Part of what's right with Carmine Superiore.

Summer in Carmine

To visit the Chiesa di San Gottardo at Carmine Superiore, and to hear the stories behind its unique frescoes, contact Pro Loco Cannobio (Cannobio's tourist information office) for an appointment, or email me louise[at]carminesuperiore[dot]it.

You can reach Carmine Superiore from the lakeside strada nazionale in about 10 minutes. However, parking at lake level in Carmine Inferiore may prove difficult. An alternative is to take a bus from Cannobio or Cannero, or to walk. From Cannobio it's about 90 minutes and from Cannero (the easier route) it's about 60 minutes. Sensible shoes recommended.

Carmine Superiore is a favourite place for a picnic. May I mention, however, that there is no municipal refuse collection, and there are no public toilets. Please be prepared to take all your trash home when you leave - a small sealable freezer bag is useful for used toilet tissue and feminine hygiene items. Please don't leave us to pick up after you.

Happy summer!

Rainy day

Warm, but raining hard with the occasional clap of gratuitous thunder. And thems as know say it'll be doing the same all week. 

Wave ta-ta to hay-making, bid adieu to raspberry-picking and send a permanent good-bye to the basil as it falls prey to an army of damp-loving slugs. Say hello to permanently wet laundry, buongiorno to muddy wellies, and ciao to those pretty little fungal blooms in the corner of the sitting room where the village well used to be. 

I love the sound of it, though, on the great stone roof. I love to sit at our highest window up under the eaves and watch the woods deepen in colour. I love to see the sheets of rain range across the silver lake. And I love it when Carmine is enveloped in cloud, and there's nothing in the world beyond me and the ancient stone. 

Carmine backstreet

Twenty-four degrees at 8am, and looking set to be another dry 30+ day again. 

I'm off to make hay before it spontaneously combusts, or it gets so hot that I spontaneously combust. I shall think from time to time of Carmine's shady lanes...

Unexpected colour in one of Carmine's back doubles.

May 2011.

How to get there

After so many days of drought, with temperatures in the mid-20s, we woke to the smell of warm, gentle rain on dry laundry. 

Carmine Superiore, Villaggio Millenario.

Follow the arrows past the cappella and keep going up, and up, and up.

You'll find me at the top.

San Gottardo

San Gottardo the feast day of the patron saint of Carmine Superiore, has dawned bright, beautiful and dry.

San Gottardo, I should explain, operates in much the same way as St Swithin. They say hereabouts that if it rains on San Gottardo, it will rain for forty days. 

Phew!

Sasso Carmine

Carmine Superiore from the south,
with Lago Maggiore and the Swiss Alps.

Winter, 2011.

Strada romana

Four degrees at 8am. Damp with the occasional drizzle of rain, and clouds straggling through the trees.

The 'Roman road', buried in the woodlands near Carmine Superiore. A truly ancient path, laid by the hands of Roman workers? Or a later construction? It doesn't really matter, I know I tread where many, many travellers have trodden before. I pass through the whisps of their ghostly stories, carrying my own, living tale with me. As I set my foot where so many and so diverse must have set theirs, I try to imagine the rich tapestry of their lives intertwined over the centuries. The illiterate peasants, the grim-faced pilgrims, the determined merchants, the lost travelling souls, the criminals dragged here to the gallows. And did San Gottardo really walk this way? Perhaps also San Carlo Borromeo on a pastoral visit,  or the piratical Mazzardi brothers, fleeing their nemesis...

I think if only I can walk softly enough, all these ghosts will resolve themselves out of the mist and I will overhear their stories, their Canterbury tales, whispering in my ear, the words made gentle by time, shivering like leaves falling.

Bel vedere

Warm and sunny. Tree cutting and rose pruning. Outdoor lunching. Spotted the first butterfly of the year, in exactly the same place as last year's first butterfly...there's a zoology thesis in there somewhere.


The tiny piazza beside Carmine Superiore's San Gottardo church offers a magnificent view of Lago Maggiore, the coast of Lombardy and the Swiss Alps. It can't be missed - after all, Carmine has only four 'streets', if you could call them that. 

This viewpoint is famous, and obvious, although I'm always amazed at the number of walkers who shoot straight through the village without locating either frescoes or panorama.

A not-quite-so-famous viewpoint takes in not only the lake and sights beyond, but also the village itself, with its stone roofs and pretty gardens. My neighbour, G., has made a sign so that you can't miss it...

From here, the great spur of rock on which Carmine is built becomes visible. And from here you get a real sense of why, more than 1,000 years ago someone put his hands on his hips, squinted his eyes against the sun and saw that this would be a good place to build a fortress.

Definitely worth the short climb.

Frescoes, Chiesa di San Gottardo, Carmine Superiore

A tantalising one degree above freezing at 8:30am. Foggy with the occasional snow flake.

Carmine Superiore is home to the tiny Romanesque Chiesa di San Gottardo, which dates back to 1330. Inside and outside, this tiny gem of a church is covered with exquisite frescoes. Originally painted in the 15th century, they have recently been restored. Above is a section of the Life of San Bartolomeo - I love the tiny dancing devil in the background.

If you would like to see more, just hit the 'frescoes' tag at the bottom of this post, or visit The Carmine Superiore Picture Gallery.

For more beautiful images from around the world, visit My World!

Delfina's greeting - a mystery

At 6am this morning it was dark, cold and snowing. In Carmine Superiore, every day is a big adventure...

Arrived recently from a collector in Rome : at first sight, evidence of a wonderful holiday in Cannobio, with, perhaps, an unforgettable visit to Carmine Superiore - in 1951.

The curious thing is that the card is addressed to a person staying at the Hotel Formentin (which still exists) in the spa town of Albano Terme (which also still exists, unsurprisingly), near Padua. Perhaps it is the addressee who is taking the holiday, and the writer who stayed at home. Could this card actually have been sent by a resident of Carmine? And could this resident still be around?

I'm off into the snow to find out...

Snow days

Minus one at 8:30am. Bright sunshine melting the icicles dangling from the mountainsides along the lake road. Someone this morning in Cannobio's Bar Centrale predicted warmer days ahead. Vedremo...

It doesn't snow very often here, in this 1,000-year-old village-fortress, but when it does, we are enveloped in a shroud of snow-clouds, the outside world disappears, and only the muffled bells from distant towers reach through to touch us. Lago Maggiore, lying spread out below us, remains only in the imagination. We become our own world, and in these moments one can imagine these ancient granite houses, the narrow cobbled streets in centuries gone by, peopled with the ragged ghosts of snow-days past.

For more beautiful images from around the world, visit My World! For more images of Carmine Superiore, visit The Carmine Superiore Picture Gallery.

In the heat of the afternoon

A hot and sultry kind of day with a cracking storm this morning, followed by fairly heavy intermittent showers.

Carmine Superiore shimmers like a mirage
in thirty degrees of heat haze.

Fortress Carmine

By the looks of the clear skies and bright sunshine falling on Carmine's ancient walls this morning, it's going to be another hot, dry day.

This house is built on and around the living rock, right next to Carmine's Chiesa di San Gottardo. In my fantasy of what Carmine was like in the Middle Ages, it stood at the very heart of the ancient fortification. With its dark, low rooms, oversize fireplace, few windows and what to my mind can only have been an arrow-slit, perhaps this was Carmine's first house...

Carmine-on-the-Hill

Lent on the wagon, day 2 : okay so far (for an explanation, click here).

Eight degrees at 8:30am. Damp and misty. A day totally unlike the one pictured below, but not totally unlike the one pictured here.

Chiesa di San Gottardo, Carmine Superiore

"We're going up there?"

Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008, 2009. All rights reserved. Please ask first.

Springwatch 2009

Three degrees at 9:00am. A beautiful bright and sunny day. Looking good for Children's Day at the Cannobio Carnevale. (Why are we doing carnival when the rest of the world is already on a chocolate-free diet? Click here.)

There! I've said it. That word..."spring".

Ezio, Carmine's timekeeper and oral historian, who remembers every important date in the last 60 or so years, who comes and goes by the ringing of the church bells across the lake in Macagno, always reminds me that spring doesn't actually start until March 21st, but I can't resist a 'spring-is-coming' post.

Carmine's meadows are covered in little flowers - scilla, primula, crocus and the occasional periwinkle. The narcissi are very much in evidence, and for a while now we've been eating sprinkles of wild garlic chives in our winter soups and omelettes. The spring bulbs are starting to show their noses above the soil, and my camellias are finally beginning to unfurl. The glorious variegated camellia at the bottom of the hill near the chapel has been in full bloom for the last few days.

The sun is rising before seven now, and it's still light just after 6pm. The sun bids farewell to Carmine after 2pm. The importance of this to Carmenites (especially we sun-lovers) is clear if you remember that the village faces east, and behind it to the west is a line of hills - the feet of Monte Carza. This means that we are left in the shadows when the sun drops behind the ridge. In mid-winter, this happens at about 1pm. In mid-summer, it happens at about 5pm. Many of our winter-time excursions into the woods south of Carmine are to seek out spots where the sun shines a couple of hours longer than in Carmine. I sometimes miss the evening sun, but I think myself lucky, when I talk to people who live in Traffiume, Cannobio's extension into the Valle Cannobina, which gets not a single ray of sun all winter. When it finally rises high enough to illuminate this part of town, Cannobio is flooded with smiles.

The chickens are also now smiling. And laying. Their annual fallow period came to an end about 10 days ago and now they're laying like crazy. (Anybody want some fresh, organic eggs?) As sometimes happens in politics, there has been a U-turn in our policy towards the bully-boy cockerel. He pecked me once too often and despite having at first elevated him to supreme power, he turned out to be recalcitrant and became the first object of my newly-implemented zero-tolerance attitude towards bullying. He's now in the freezer. The old guard has been taken out of retirement and is once again happily crowing in the coop. His generally pacific view on life enables me to delegate grain-feeding to B, who is the same size.

Staying with the fauna, the last case of cat 'flu seems to have cleared itself up (although the patient seems to have come to like sleeping on the end of my bed and now follows me home in the evenings in order to sidle through the front door and on up the stairs). Last year's female kitten has been safely spayed and her stitches are gradually disappearing. She's also decided she likes being indoors (as well as the rich diet of fish offcuts and rabbit bits to be had at our hearth). The old mother cat is once again pregnant - she was too smart to walk into the trap I patiently baited every day for a fortnight recently, and so has escaped the vet's scalpel for another year. I shortly must gird my loins and take the wonderfully fluffy Trouble (last year's male kitten) to be castrated, otherwise he will be off 'in amore' as they say here. I have more trouble (excuse pun) castrating the males than I do spaying the females, but I guess 'twas ever thus with Mamas and their boys.

Wood-cutting this year has been truncated by bad weather at the waning moon in December (apparently the optimum time to cut for firewood). We're still putting 15 kilos into Mathilda every day, but only once a day. Supplemented with the warmth from Edna (brand name Etna...) the cucina economica (a woodfired oven almost totally unlike an Aga), or from the Charnwood woodburner in the sitting room, and we're cosy. The wood floors seem less than icy to the tootsies now, and the cold water that comes out of the taps direct from the lake seems less cold.

More springtime firsts : at the weekend we saw our first butterflies. Yesterday I saw the first scorpion (where's me scorpion kit?), and today I see that the bees are once again busily in and out of the stone walls of Carmine's houses looking for good places to build. A couple of weeks ago I spotted a bushy-tailed squirrel moving into a tree-hole pecked out by a woodpecker last year, and talking about holes, I see that another of my rugs has fallen victim to the nest-building mice.

Most important of all, though, it seems that as February (the Italian translates as "the fever month") wanes so does the seemingly endless stream of coughs, colds, fevers and stomach upsets that keeps all the kindergarten kids in a limbo of under-the-weather-ness at this time of year. AJ and B haven't been sick for almost a fortnight. And neither has Mama.

Now that can't be bad.

Carmine Superiore & Lago Maggiore: a brief & very personal guide

Carmine Superiore is a tiny village perched on an outcrop of rock overlooking Italy's stunning Lago Maggiore. It was founded towards the end of the 10th century AD as a fortified place to which people from the surrounding area could go in times of trouble. Having said that, the bare rock outside my front door is engraved with what the experts believe to be Neolithic carvings, so the immediate area seems to have been a place of habitation, or at least ritual, for at least two thousand years before that. (You'll find a potted history of the village here.)

Most visitors come up here in search of the Chiesa di San Gottardo, Carmine's beautiful little Romanesque church. Built in the 14th century, the church is covered inside and out with some truly beautiful Lombardy-School frescoes, painted in the 15th century. The frescoes were recently restored under the direction of the Comune di Cannobio and are a wonderful sight. Some details are featured in the slideshow in the sidebar.

Interior, Chiesa di San Gottardo.

Copyright © dalbuio, reproduced by kind permission.

Part of what makes Carmine Superiore so special is the fact that there are no cars here. Why? For the simple reason that there is no road. Whoever comes up here walks (and its a rise of about 100m vertical). And whatever they bring with them normally comes up on their back. For what this means in real life, see here. The hill is a constant in our lives. Almost everything we do is informed or necessitated by the hill. It is one of our biggest bugbears. But it is also one of Carmine's greatest attractions. One tour leader this summer put it in a nutshell. He said that for his visitors it was not so much reaching the destination that mattered, but it was "the spirit of the walk" that gives them so much satisfaction. I guess you value something just that little bit more if you have to work for it.

The personal bit
When I first came to live here, Carmine was mostly deserted, at least, there was no-one living here all year round. The centre of a thriving agricultural settlement before the start of the 20th century, the village had gradually emptied out (for the reasons, see here), and the last full-time resident had moved down the hill in the early 1990s. Many of the houses, though, had been bought as holiday homes and renovated in the 1970s, but some buildings still stood empty. After an association with the village that went back more than 30 years, my husband and I were offered the chance to buy two interlinked houses in 2001. In a fit of passion for the place, we rearranged our lives so that we could live here all year round, and in 2004, at the ripe old age of 40, I gave birth to our son, AJ. He was the first child to be born resident here for more than 60 years.

I now have two children who love to scream around the cobbled car-free alleyways, playing in the mud, kicking up a fuss and doing their best to disturb Carmine's ages-old serenity. But I still love those rare sparkling winter days, wrapped up in a warm sweater, drinking a mug of strong, sweet tea by the church, with a view over the lake, knowing that I am truly alone with the world spread out below me.

This post talks a bit more about life up here for a mother in the 21st century.

So what's to see and do hereabouts?

A very personal visitor's guide
Carmine is part of the comune of Cannobio, a small town just along the lake to the north. It's situated on the mouth of the Cannobina River, and was originally a Celtic settlement way back when. Cannobio is a gem. Its people are friendly, and its old town - with parts dating back to the Middle Ages - is charming. In the summer, the place is heaving with visitors, mostly German or Dutch. Cannobio's lungolago, the lakeside walk, is a great place to stroll and eat supper in the evenings, and water sports at the beach keep visitors of all ages happy. All year round the lungolago is the scene of an enormous Sunday morning street market, which is visited by tens of thousands each year, and the summer finds it a venue for musical entertainments, festivals and other events.

Cannobio's old harbour.
Copyright © tschutsch, reproduced by kind permission.

Moving further north along the winding lake road, you hit the border with the Italian-speaking Swiss canton of Ticino (passports at the ready), which is perhaps best-known for its association with writer Hermann Hesse, who lived in the area from 1919 to 1931. Ascona is the Swiss town that lies at the northernmost end of Lago Maggiore, a more expensive and rather more sedate counterpart to Italy's Cannobio. Ascona's summer highlight is the Ascona Jazz Festival, ten days of jazz in venues around the town, not least along the lungolago with the lake as a stunning backdrop. We also enjoy Ascona's February Carnevale celebrations. In winter, the lungolago is busy with ladies in fur coats, dripping with jewels and walking their poodles. You know the kind of thing.

Moving further north on the road towards the mountain passes of San Bernardino and San Gottardo, there is the city of Bellinzona, capital of the canton of Ticino. Bellinzona boasts not one, but three castles, which together form a UNESCO world heritage site. Dating back almost 2,000 years, the castles are said to be the finest example of medieval fortifications in the whole of Switzerland.

If, instead of heading north along the lake road from Carmine, you head in a southerly direction, the first town you come across is Cannero Riviera.

Cannero Riviera.
Copyright © ladigue_99, reproduced by kind permission.

The beach here is tucked away in a sheltered south-facing bay, and so while Cannobio is great for windsurfers and all sorts of water sports, Cannero is better for the less strenuous sports of sunbathing, paddling and people-watching. Cannero is famous at Christmas time for its nativity scenes. They seem to be on every corner and in every garden as you stroll around the town, which is beautifully decorated for Christmas. Some include not only the Christ child in the stable, but also entire landscapes peopled with figures carrying out agricultural and everyday tasks, rivers with real water that really flow, angels that fly through the air. Enchanting!

If you don't want to take your car along the lake road, it is possible to walk from Cannero to Carmine, and then along to Cannobio, along the ancient footpath, known as the Via delle Genti, which pre-dates the lakeside route. In fact, what's said to be part of the Roman road still exists in the midst of the woodlands. This is a lovely walk. It takes some time, and is 'moderate' in difficulty. Sensible shoes and perhaps a walking stick are recommended. Here you'll see the remains of the former settlements : broken walls, crumbling houses and stables, gardens for so long made to thrive and for so long now deserted.

If you're planning the walk and want to see inside the church when you get here, drop me an email or knock on my door, and if I'm around I'll try to arrange something for you. If I'm not, speak to the immensely helpful people at the tourist information office in Via Giovanola, Cannobio, near the church.

If you don't want to drive and you don't want to walk, the third possibility is to take a boat, and if you do this, between Carmine and Cannero you will run into the imposing Castelli di Cannero, the ruins of two medieval castles set on islands in the middle of the lake. The castles have a long and pretty swashbuckling history, full of ruthless pirates, noble Milanese dukes and downtrodden serfs. For the full story, see here.

Castelli di Cannero.
Copyright © Anton Engelsman, reproduced by kind permission.

Beyond Cannero, heading south along the west side of the lake, you come to Verbania, the provincial capital. Verbania is made up of three separate towns - Pallanza, Intra and Suna. The towns were gathered together into one entity under the Mussolini regime, and, consistent with Mussolini's ideology of reviving Italy's great Classical identity, the Roman name for the lake (Verbano) was used.

Verbania Pallanza
Copyright © gneopompeo, reproduced by kind permission.

As you would expect from a capital, Verbania has lots to offer. The old town is crammed with good shopping, and the lakeside area in particular is a good place to be if you're feeling peckish. Year round, there is a full diary of concerts, film, theatre and dance, plus activities for children and local festivals. Carnevale is particularly colourful. One of the most famous of Verbania's sights is Villa Taranto with its beautiful botanical gardens. A visit to the Museo del Paesaggio, Verbania's museum of archaeology, painting and sculpture, is also well worthwhile.

Villa Taranto.
Copyright © corto.maltese, reproduced by kind permission.

Of course, the big presence in the region is Lago Maggiore. How could I forget! Fifty-four kilometres long, the lake is the second largest of Italy's northern lakes after Lake Garda. The lake has a number of islands large enough for settlements. In the Swiss sector are the Brissago Islands, the largest of which has a beautiful botanical garden (take a boat from Porto Ronco). Further south lie the Borromeo Islands - Isola Madre (18th-century botanical gardens and the 16th-century Palazzo Borromeo), Isola Bella (a second Palazzo Borromeo, and home to the annual Stresa Music Festival, with connections to Italy's favourite condutor, Arturo Toscanini) and Isola dei Pescatori (ancient narrow streets, great fish restaurants, as the name suggests). For the Borromeo Islands, take a boat from Intra, Pallanza, Stresa or Baveno.

And as if the lake isn't enough, there are also the mountains all around. The Val Grande National Park is Italy's largest wilderness area, offering miles and miles of marked trails. A few miles into Switzerland and you're in the beautiful Val Verzasca, and can also reach Valle Maggia and the Centovalli.

Centovalli baita.

Copyright © soulsister, reproduced by kind permission.

Nearby mountain peaks include Monte Carza (1100m), Monte Zeda (2157m), Monte Mottarone (1491m, accessible by cable car) and Cannobio's own Monte Giove (1298m).

I'm of course just skimming the surface of the many things to see and do in the area. I could be waxing lyrical about so many places to see: Orta San Giulio with its car-free old-town, so picturesque that brides fight to be married and photographed here; the stern Rocca d'Angera castle; the 35-m-high statue of San Carlo Borromeo in Arona; the Santa Caterina monastery with its beautiful frescoes, clinging to the side of the cliff and accessible by boat or on foot; and the Sacro Monte at Ghiffa (another UNESCO World Heritage Site). But I know you're already pricing tickets to Milan Linate or Malpensa and looking at the kids' holiday schedules for next year. So I'll return to base for just a couple more paragraphs.

Rocca d'Angera fortress.

Copyright © gneopompeo, reproduced by kind permission.

The changing seasons
One of the greatest gifts Carmine Superiore has given to me, is the opportunity to see and celebrate the changing seasons each year, a virtual impossibility if you live and work on London's South Bank, my former home.

Spring brings the camellias for which Lago Maggiore is justly famous, and planting time in the garden. It brings Carnevale and, later, Easter, with the real-life chicks we time to hatch on Easter Day for the delight of all the children.

Summer brings the pipistrelli back to Carmine's nighttime skies and wakes the scrabbling dormice in the attics. There are busy days in the garden and lazy days on the beach. Carmine fills up with summer visitors, and the lake is a-flutter with colourful sails.

Week after week, the various towns round about find an excuse for fireworks and celebrations, and we in Carmine are in the evenings to be found on the church 'piazza', glass in hand, for a perfect view. When kindergarten closes for the year at the end of June, our routine changes, to include a daily dip from Carmine's very own pebble beach at the foot of the hill. July is the hottest month, with August and September gradually cooling until, some time in October we get the first rains (that'd be about now).

Autumn brings castagne and funghi, and what seems like the entire population is to be found in the woods in search of sweet chestnuts and the much-prized porcini mushrooms. Most towns and villages (even my son's kindergarten) put on a castagnata, with huge pans of chestnuts roasting over open fires. Autumn also brings wild boar to root around in any garden with an open gate, causing havoc among the spring bulbs.

The All Saints holiday signals the start of winter for many people, as they bring candles and flowers to the graves of their loved-ones and attend mass in memory of those who have left us (this year, too many). Winter is most often a season of dry, sunny days with clear brilliant blue skies and a glassy lake, but sometimes we have some snow. After All Saints, everyone seems to want to hibernate, but before anyone can get too snuggled in, the Christmas lights are up and the nativity scenes are being dusted off. Christmas is celebrated with pannetone and mulled wine, and on Epiphany, La Befana, an ugly old witch, brings gifts to all the children. In Cannobio, the Christmas holiday is extended by two days for the annual celebration of the town's patronal festival, during which the entire old town is lit by thousands and thousands of candles, and the SS Pieta' is brought in procession from one church to another.

Cannobio's candlelight patronal festival.
Copyright © ladigue_99, reproduced by kind permission.

At the end of January, Cannobio's townspeople take part in a night-time lantern-light walk through the woodlands, a pilgrimage to mark mid-winter that has its roots in the time of the Romans and perhaps even earlier.

When I first came to live in Italy, a colleague in Milan told me she disliked Lago Maggiore in the winter. She thought of the lake at this time of year as being 'abandoned', 'triste' and 'unloved'. But today, as I look out of my kitchen window and see the first sprinkling of snow on the distant Alps and the lake lying below me, steely and calm, I know that my love for this place, with its age-old memories and its big-hearted people, can only grow with the years. While I'm still here, the lake, and above all Carmine, will never be unloved.

Have a good day - and to all you Americans reading, please, please elect the right guy!

Come back to Sasso Carmine soon!

Unless indicated otherwise, all text and pictures copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008. All rights reserved. My grateful thanks go to all the Flickr members who so kindly gave me permission to use their beautiful images - thank-you for your collaboration at such short notice.

Happy Anniversary!

On 27 September 2007, Louise sat down to write. And she didn't stop. At five in the morning, at 11 at night. She wrote. In between the last few breast feeds and in between nappy changes. She wrote in her head while walking her son up and down the hill for asilo, and she wrote at the computer during precious nap times. She made notes in the car, on the bus, in cafes and on planes. Gradually, as the world turned and the seasons changed, a year went by. And today is 27 September 2008, the first anniversary of A View from Carmine Superiore, weblog, personal notebook and burgeoning portrait of a village.

The original idea was simply to stay sane. As a mother of two very small children rattling around an unfinished restoration project, surrounded on all sides by people who speak a different language (including those two small children), and perched on a now-famous granite outcrop of rock with not much in the way of permanent neighbours, my sanity was in serious peril. Writing every day offered a discipline outside of mothering and housewifery that ensured I took a step back from the daily brouhaha and got to see the funny side (to remember which side the funny side was).

Without meaning to get so serious, I gradually also found myself trying to make sense of living here on top of a rock in a depopulated medieval village with no vehicle access, to try to understand that accidental life-choice I made when I came here to live permanently in 2003.

That's my excuse for adding one more drop in the ocean of, reportedly, 8 million weblogs online.

And I'm sticking to it.

In the past year, the site has received more than 13,000 hits. While the phenomenon of the floating IP address makes it difficult to be totally sure, a painstaking process of scientific triangulation leads me to believe that it is read regularly not only by Carmenites, or by members of my own family, but also by kindly lunatics as far away as Canada, Queensland, New Delhi, Jakarta, New England, Houston Texas and Hobart Tasmania. (Hello, Hobart Tasmania. Why don't you leave a comment? I'm fascinated to know who you are!)

A recent surprise article in the provincial newspaper outed A View from Carmine Superiore from the cyberspace closet, and onto the streets of the region. The response was, actually, wonderful. My 15 minutes of fame. Friends, acquaintances and total strangers approached me on the street, at the asilo, in the supermarket 20km away, even in the cemetery, to tell me they liked what they saw. For a moment there, the glare of publicity was so great I looked out my old 80s RayBans and started to price smoked windows for the Panda. Thank-you neighbours all for so many kind words!


So, as the world turns, the leaves start to change, and the people of Cannobio start to shove their hands in their pockets and complain about the cold mornings, I'll go on writing. Perhaps not at 5am - I am, after all, a year older and I'm starting to need my beauty sleep - but I'll try for once a day. And I hope you'll keep checking in periodically to see how we're doing up here on Sasso Carmine.

Thank-you for reading,

Louise (in RayBans)

Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008. All rights reserved. Please ask first.

The past and the present in Carmine

The following is part of an article I was asked to write a couple of years ago for a local bi-annual cultural publication put out by the comune. The brief was to try to give a view of what it was like to be a woman living in Carmine Superiore in the 21st century.

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Carmine Superiore is a unique mix of old and new : from its ancient cobbled streets to the tv aerials perched on its roofs. Electricity and telephone lines have reached the village, but the same cannot be said for the gas supply or a modern sewerage system, to say nothing of the absence of vehicle access that makes Carmine such a special place.

In the last 100 years, this tiny village has undergone immense change. It no longer has a fixed population who rely on the labour of their own hands in its meadows, on its terraces, and among its woodlands. The population waxes and wanes with the seasons. Some houses are inhabited perhaps only once in the course of a year, others see their owners only during the summer, and there are only two or three that can be said to be occupied on a permanent basis all year round.

Heating the oldest of the stone houses by electrical means would be prohibitively expensive, and for this reason we decided to follow the route taken by most of the other proprietors in Carmine and use wood for heating and cooking, cutting what we needed from the woodland that now encroaches on the village. My husband and I quickly found that collecting enough wood to keep us warm, heat our water and fire our cooking stove was a year-round activity, that it took all our energy when not working at our day-jobs, and that it was an activity that forced a certain division of labour according to sex. For the first two years I was determined to do my bit, to put into practice my ideas of the equality of the sexes even when it came to physical labour. But when I became a mother, it became abundantly clear to me that I would have to settle for picking up sticks rather than knocking wedges into tree trunks, and that I would have to look after my toddler rather than chop firewood.

For me as a full-time mother, living in Carmine Superiore has negative and positive aspects. I am able to raise my family in a car-less environment, without the stress of constant traffic noise and breathing the fresh air of the woodlands. On the other hand, Carmine now lacks any of the 'services' taken for granted by mothers in other places : healthcare, grocery shops, even the proximity of the extended family to help with childcare. This makes life with children a complicated proposition as mothers everywhere will be able to imagine.

The physical resources required to climb the hill have diminished with my second pregnancy and at the same time my first child, who is still not quite able to walk up under his own steam, has grown heavier every day. And it recently occurred to me that instead of being a paradise, as so many visitors have called this place, it could become a prison. The pregnancy will shortly come to an end, but it has made me realise that if I want to continue living in Carmine Superiore I will have to stay in good physical condition into old age. Paradoxically, the solution to this is living in Carmine : to live here one must stay in peak condition, and living here keeps one in peak condition. I for one don't need a gymn subscription.

In previous centuries there was nothing more natural than having a family in Carmine. But in the modern era nothing has become more fraught with complication than giving birth to a child here. In a few days after writing these words I expect to be starting the long walk to the labour ward. I'll be making the descent in my walking boots and carrying my walking stick, probably in the dark - I hope not in a summer downpour - pausing every now and then to breathe through a contraction. It will be important to choose the right moment to go down. I must leave home soon enough to get down the hill (and then around the lake another 30 minutes) without actually giving birth, but if I arrive at the hospital too early in the labour I run the risk of being sent back home, that is, to make the ascent and then descend once more a short time later. God-willing I will return home to Carmine three days after the birth, ready to face the climb, probably in the heat of the day and carrying in my arms the most precious of bundles.

And as I anticipate meeting the newest Carmenitt, I find myself remembering the women of Carmine who have lived here before me, having their children up here without the security of modern health care. Facing the real threat of death in childbirth. And the inconveniences I myself face pale into insignificance.

All told, one thing is certain. Life in Carmine Superiore requires an almost daily re-evaluation of my principles and beliefs. It was I who chose to leave behind the many advantages of city life in favour of the many advantages offered by this unique place. It was a choice that I made not only for myself, but also on behalf of my children, and I hope that one day when they remember the years they spent growing up here they also will think it was a good choice.

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A couple of days after submitting this piece for translation, I did indeed take that long walk to the labour ward. I paused for contractions some twenty times on the walk down, and arrived at the hospital only a very short time before giving birth to B. Three days later we came home on foot in the heat of the day. The weather was very kind to us.

And now B is two, life on The Rock is still fairly complicated, but I'm still sure I made the right choice.

Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008. All rights reserved. Please ask first.