Friday 16th October 2009 – 'Happy Village Camping', Rome

We drove to Murlo, the largest local town but actually barely more than a village. The old part of the village is a tiny settlement surrounding a Mediaeval castle on the top of a hill. This is very attractive with lovely views over the surrounding countryside but it also has another attraction. The
castle has been renovated and now houses an archaeological museum with finds from an Etruscan site, 'Poggio Civitate', on a neighbouring hill. The site has two houses from different periods the earlier one built in the 7th century BC, later destroyed by fire, and the second one that superseded it built in the 6th century BC. The site was eventually abandoned in 525 BC but, intriguingly, it was carefully demolished, many architectural elements deliberately buried intact and the well blocked to prevent its future use. It has been suggested that the owners moved to another location taking their valuables with them and wanted to make sure that nobody else occupied their original site. For such a small village, the museum was surprisingly good – well presented, English translations on many boards and it had some excellent finds. Some finds had gone to museums in the large cities but it was great to see many exhibited so close to their original site. The other advantage of this is that there is plenty of space to show many exhibits and tell the story of the site. In a large museum, only the best finds would be shown as the display space would have to be limited.
One of the most interesting aspects of the site is the high quality terracotta work produced on the site. The workshop used in the first phase of development has been found and it has been established that it was destroyed in the fire. Unfinished clay tiles were discovered in the wreckage with human and animal footprints made, they have surmised, when the occupants fled the fire. Terracotta wall tiles and roof decorations have been excavated – masks decorated the eaves of the buildings whilst clay statues were set on the apex of the roof. One of these statues is of a man wearing a large broad-brimmed hat – most unusual!
From Murlo we had to cut across country to join the R2 (the Roman 'Via Cassia') and were rewarded by the sight of two magnificent villas or castles from one single viewing point. I suspect that they were rival estates each determined to demonstrate their power. The one pictured above was in a tiny settlement called Castelnuovo, a very common name in Italy – we must have past dozens of towns and villages with that name and there must be hundreds in the country. We have two towns called 'Newcastle' in England but Italy has a few more castles than us!
The vineyard scenery gave way to the much more traditional agriculture in Southern Tuscany. Vast ploughed fields encompassed many small hills whilst the farmhouses occupied the highest hill on the estate. The farmhouses were very attractive, often surrounded by trees and with long poplar-lined drives that contrasted against the light grey of the fields.
It was a day of castles and as we moved from Tuscany into Lazio encountered another spectacular example at Bolsena, the main town on Lake Bolsena. This looked like an interesting town and the lake also looked well worth a visit. It's on the list for another trip!
We attempted to stop at two aires shown in the Guida Camper book but one was padlocked and the other obviously closed for the season (our fault, we didn't read the entry properly), so we decided to move on to a campsite listed in the ACSI guide. This was 'Happy Village Camping' north of Rome, just outside the outer motorway ring road. We probably wouldn't have chosen a site with such a naff name but it sounded good in the guide and they operate the special ACSI rate of €15 out of season.
It turned out to be very good and we were soon on our allocated pitch just two pitches away from another Hobby motorhome. We see very few Hobby's on our travels and this was an even rarer version – a British Hobby. It was the big sister of ours, a 600 based on a Fiat chassis. It is over a metre longer than our T600 and has a garage with twin single beds above it. It looked very comfortable with all of the same high-quality Hobby fittings as ours. Mike was also towing a Smart car that enabled they to get around more easily once they had found a campsite.
Photos: Terracotta statues from the Etruscan site of Poggio Civitate; A Tuscan castle between Bibbiano and Buonconvento.