Another walk and dinner at Lillo Tatini in Panicale

With only a week left in Panicale our timetable seems full of good food opportunities, so walking up hills is essential for balance. Today's  walk was quite easy  but for the beginning and the end. That is the problem with hill top villages,  you can't  avoid hills.

We set off on foot and walked through the village, down to the main road and up hill to La Querciolana.

This mauve-blue plant grows beside the roads and we are convinced that it is chicory. Chicory is the green side dish served in most restaurants at present and the one we have enjoyed wilted and with a dash of oil. It is related to the dandelion and the basal leaves are the ones served. 

Herb Fennel is also available for roadside foraging.

We walked by olive groves at first and I love these very old beauties. These trees will be many hundreds of years old.  They have a great capacity to re-shoot when a tree is dying, thus ensuring continued life. In the second photo there are three old trees that have generated from one much older trunk no longer surviving. About the only thing olive trees really don't  like is very heavy frost.

At La Querciolana we turned left down the road we should have returned on last week. We descended through forest land right down to the valley floor.

Once on the Le Mura road we headed towards the village for a short time and with Panicale in the distance we then turned off to the right, again using the road we should have been on last week. This is cropping land and in some places it was ready for another cut.

Heading on a back road towards Colgiordano we had another gorgeous view of our old fantasy 'casa colonica' sitting in its ploughed field.

The soil is incredibly deep here and the ploughing has always fascinated us. They use a large moldboard plough to turn the soil over. In this photo Kelly has one foot on the road's edge and the other in the ditch. At shoulder level is a drainage ditch and the soil ready for planting.

We continued on up via Rovinato, crossed over the main road once more and looked up via Colgiordano Vecchio, the old Colgiordano road, to Panicale high above us.
The sign said the unmade road had a 10% gradient.

Notice I'm  getting further and further behind?

What a climb but what a view. 

Fitbit told me we walked 5.7 kilometres in two hours fifteen minutes. I need lots of rest and recovery moments along the way!

After all that strenuous exercise we took a long pausa then went out for dinner at Lillo Tatini in Panicale. Yet another excellent restaurant in this very little village. This one has a Michelin star and is renowned for its local produce, innovative presentation and friendly service.

The view of the piazza from our table on the balcony at 8 pm.

After a glass of prosecco we enjoyed a Vino Nobile di Montepulciano 2010.

Our table with warm bread rolls with herb butter.

Baccala (salted cod) with prunes on a bed of  chickpea mash. Kelly had pâtè.

For secondo Kel had hand made pasta stuffed with pork and veal with truffles.

I had eel with cherry tomatoes and spinach. The delicate flavours were just so special.

We relented and had dolce - mine was a parfait of white chocolate ice-cream with a pistacchio crunch.

Kel's  was Umbrian strudel with home made ice- cream.

What a magnificent evening. It doesn't  get any better than this.