Rural retreats in Italy; the home of 'slow'

The slow movement began back in the 1980's in Italy to counteract fast food and fast life and promote local, traditional food culture and a slower pace of life. Guido, the owner of Barbialla Nuova guesthouse (pictured) in the Tuscan countryside sums up his devotion to slow living:

"We are Slow through and through: we wait for just the right moment to collect truffles; we raise our cattle in a leisurely way, giving them all the time they need to grow naturally. We run our agriturismo in a way that we feel helps our guests to leave behind the stresses of modern life."

As I read this, I thought; 'when's my next holiday? I'm going to Tuscany'. I couldn't have come across a more relevant article for slowmoves as I flicked through last weekend's Observer and read an article about rural retreats in Italy called 'A slow traveler's guide to Italy'. Alaistar Sawday has just published a new book called 'Go Slow Italy' and he's hand-picked a selection of the places to stay for the Observer. They all have a focus on home-grown products, the pleasures of the communal table, abide to social and environmentally-sound practices.

Here is a selection of the wonderfully dreamy and inspiring places... let me know if you ever have the pleasure of making your way to any of them, I would love to hear about it.

Locanda Casanuova, Tuscany (pictured below)

Locanda Casanuova is a place of contemplation - and always has been, for it began life as a monastery. Bedrooms are almost monastically simple, but have splashes of colour and style to introduce a perfect measure of modernity.

The 23 hectares of vineyards and olives produce 7,000 litres of wine and a lot of olive oil; there is an organic vegetable garden too. It is an intensely personal place. It was 20 years ago that they came here and resolved to rescue it. They have done so much more: Ursula practises yoga in the early mornings - you are welcome to join her - and is a superb cook; meals are wonderfully convivial affairs in the refectory, off which is a library where you can pore over trekking maps at a big round table.

• Locanda Casanuova, near Figline Valdarno (00 39 055 950 0027; casanuova.info). Twelve doubles, two suites, four singles - from €70 per person half board. Two apartments, from €75 a night for two. Nearest train station: Figline Valdarno

I Mandorli Agriturismo, Umbria

Wanda is the overseer of this 45-hectare estate. With her three daughters, Maria, Alessandra and Sara, and their daughters, you have the privilege of seeing Italian family life in action. I Mandorli is a higgledy-piggledy house with little steps here and there leading to rooms and apartments, outhouses, lofts and old olive mills. Flowers tumble from pots, capers scale stone walls and fruit and cypress trees give shade in the garden. Bedrooms are simple affairs with wrought-iron beds and pale homemade patchwork quilts; the small bathrooms are spotless. The vineyard is managed organically; vegetables and sunflowers are grown and there is a little outlet for the estate's produce; you can buy wine, lentils, oils and jams to take home.

Guests can wander the land, pick herbs, help with the olive harvest, take cookery lessons, cycle, walk and go rafting. Children will love the wooden slide and seesaw, the old pathways and steps on this shallow hillside, the new pool - wonderful to return to after outings to Assisi and Spoleto.

• I Mandorli Agriturismo, near Trevi (00 39 0742 78669; agriturismoimandorli.com). One twin/double, two triples, from €40. Three apartments: one for two; two for four, from €65 a night. Nearest train station: Trevi

CouchSurfing your way around the world

Driving a few extra hours to avoid spending a night in a shady motel; an uncomfortable overnight stop-over at an airport because you wouldn’t know where to go; too little money on the last leg of a trip to be able to enjoy it; or leaving a city with mixed feelings because the tourist spots didn’t do it for you. Those are situations that we have all been exposed to at one point or another during our travels.



I wish I had known about CouchSurfing during those ‘hitches’. CouchSurfing is a website connecting people throughout the world by sparing their extra bed or couch (for free!), thereby offering an affordable way to plan your itinerary but the real attraction of this website is the cultural exchanges taking place between guests and hosts who often go out of their way to provide a meal or offer a guided tour of their city with a local perspective.

Safety features have also been planned out to minimize misadventures and consist mainly of member referrals as well as a system to verify names and addresses. And it all seems to work fine.

The first random search led me to the following referral of a female UK traveler to Santiago de Chile:

“If Carlos ever gets tired of the day job he should become a tour guide (or a bartender thanks to his excellent pisco sours!)! He gave me a wonderful and very thorough tour around Santiago when I surfed his couch there, and I enjoyed every minute of it. He´s a very friendly, informed and easy-going person - thanks so much, Carlos, for your hospitality and help in Chile.”

To date, CouchSurfing has over 1 million members across 232 countries and is growing by the day. All there is left to do now is dig out a map and hit the road! Happy surfing!

Website: www.couchsurfing.com

[Jerome]

Cycling and wine tasting in Burgundy

I've always had a vision of cycling through vineyards and stopping in little wine villages to go wine-tasting. Well that's exactly what I did last week in the wonderful region of Burgundy in France with my boyfriend. Burgundy, the region known for wine, mustard, Cassis, and meat was an easy sell, and the fact that it was only 2 hours from Paris made it all the more attractive.

We took the Eurostar from Kings Cross St Pancras in London and 2 hours later we were having an (expensive) coffee at a typical french cafe across from Gare du Nord in Paris. We spent a couple of days exploring Paris before heading east to Beaune, a picturesque town in the middle of Burgundy. You can catch the TGV from Gare de Lyon to Beaune via Dijon which takes about 2 and a half hours in total.



Where we stayed...
A lovely bed & breakfast about 20km from Beaune and right near a famous wine village called Nuits-Saint-Georges. Val de Vergy is a massive old country house build of stone, that has 4 unique bedrooms, a swimming pool and breathtaking views of the surrounding countryside and neighbouring horses. It meets all the criteria that I listed in my previous post about unique places to stay. The house was built in 1680 by a wine-maker. The current owners, Brigitte and Dominique, have been living there for 40 years, having bought it as young newlyweds when it was just a ruin without running water or electricity. You can read all about their inspiring story in the memory book they made for all the guests to read in the breakfast room.



Our room was absolutely lovely, with wooden beams and a huge bathroom with free-standing bath. Brigitte laid out a yummy breakfast of farmhouse baguette, homemade jams and honey and fromage frais every morning in the common room where all the guests eat together.

The cycling bit...
On the first day, I was determined to fulfill my vision of cycling through the vineyards and that's just what we did. We headed into Beaune and rented bikes across from the train station (watch out, EVERYTHING is closed between 12 and 2!) and off we went on the 'velo-route' through the vineyards. The bike route was 22km there and 22km back, on special roads through the vines and going through the famous wine villages of Pommard, Volnay, Meursault. It was stunning scenery and we kept thinking it would be even better at the height of spring or during harvest season. I would recommend bringing a picnic and stopping off for a bite amidst the vines.

The wine bit...
So now on to the wonders of wine-tasting. We decided not to combine wine-tasting with cycling as we may never have gotten back to Beaune! We did a wine course at Sensation Vin in Beaune which was really eye-opening. I've loved red wine for a while now but I have to admit I don't know much about it: the different grapes, regions, appellations, etc. In an hour, the teacher managed to cram in all the basics and had us try ('deguster') 6 different wines. By the end, we understood the different 'Appellation d'origine controllees' (AOCs) which ranged from Grand Cru to more regional appellations. We could also distinguish between the different tastes, smells, and colours and start to understand the reasons behind them.

This gave us a good basis for our real wine-tasting experience at the oldest wine cellars in Beaune 'Patriarche' which span for 5km underground. Just imagine 5km of wine bottles ranging from 1904 to today. We wandered through the dark corridors lined with thousands of perfectly arranged bottles to find the tasting area where we sampled all of 13 wines. I had to learn the art of 'deguster' (spitting out the wine after you taste it), otherwise I don't think I would have come back up.



The last night we went to eat at a real local restaurant in Villars-Fontaine 'L'auberge du Coteau' and had an amazingly tender Cote de Boeuf and of course some local wine. It was quite hilarious because we bumped into everyone that night: our hosts at the b&b, 2 of the restaurant owners where we ate on the other nights and the other guests in our b&b. That's when we knew we were eating at the right place.

[Anouk]

Unique places to lay our heads

At slowmoves, as we start thinking of our next escapade, we look for slightly unusual independent and personalised places to stay. They can be family-run bed & breakfasts or working farms or anywhere that has a large dose of charm. We take pleasure in finding a gem that we can later share with our friends and family (or write about on this blog).

What makes a place special?

• Often a historical or period building that fits in with the local area
  
• Set in beautiful surroundings: some of my favourites are set in the middle of the countryside or in a sleepy rural village. But it could be in a quirky part of a city or town
• The owners are friendly and welcoming and real ‘locals’. They know the area inside out and can recommend the best local haunts
• A non-commercial or manufactured feel to it. Every room has an individual personality. You feel like you’re staying at someone’s house rather than a chain hotel
• It isn't everyone to their own. You integrate with the hosts and other guests at breakfast or tea time
• Local, seasonal food where possible. I have great memories of seasonal fruits at breakfast and homemade jams and breads

Here are a few of the gems that I discovered in 2008 right here in the UK:

Bopeep Farmhouse, Alciston, East Sussex
Set at the foot of the south downs so perfect for walking. About half an hour walk from the gorgeous village Alfriston which has cozy pubs and cafes and one the best independent bookshops in England 'Much ado books'














Faerystone Bed & Breakfast, Carbis Bay, Cornwall
The highlight here was the amazing view from the balcony overlooking the sea. We had breakfast every morning on our balcony in our complementary robes. Perfect for a romantic getaway.

Fields Cottage, Bisley, Gloucestershire
The hosts were lovely and welcoming. They came to pick us up from the station, served tea and homemade cookies on arrival. In fact they made everything homemade which made the house smell amazing. So quiet and nothing to do but walk, walk, eat and sleep.


If you want a little help finding a special place to stay in the UK or anywhere in the world, a great resource is Sawday’s special places to stay website. He has a real knack for finding charming, unique and slightly odd places to stay.

We'd love to hear about the gems that you've found on your travels, so do get in touch and leave comments.

[Anouk]

Taking time in the Basque Country

Applying slowmoves re-adjusts how we look at a journey. If we get there quick, we are more likely to want things quick while we are there. At least from my experience. On short holidays before slowmoves, I would be less likely to be spontaneous and considered any travel while away with reluctance. However on a trip to San Sebastian earlier this month, a two hour bus ride along the coast to Bilbao seemed like a short amount of time, considering it would open up two days in a place of intrigue, to which I had not been before. I had enjoyed the trains to San Seb from Paris, so a couple of hours more travel was no chore, and right to do given rain was falling on and on. Beside the Bay of Biscay during November!

The Guggenheim was stunning. The food market - Mercado de La Ribera - was another place certainly worth seeing. A great cafe inside it to sit amongst the stalls, the river to one side and Inglesia de San Anton, one of Bilbao's oldest churches, to another. The market also stands at the start of the 'seven streets' of original Bilbao, and not far from Plaza Nueva. Surrounded by old, old facades, Plaza Nueva offered us a couple of gems. To stay, check out the cheap and basic but full of character, Pension Manea. Somewhere-like we stumbled with heavy bags to find. Top floor and views on to red roofs and street below, but made by the owner who welcomed us like lost children! And on the corner of the Plaza was the fantastic Cafe Bar Bilbao. From it's tiles to the food, the Cafe holds an authenticity as real as the Basque people that frequent it.

It takes time to build places with as much character, it's certainly worth taking the time to find them.

[George]

Country retreat in Devon

Over the past few months I've been focusing on exploring England, partly due to lack of time, partly because there are so many wonderful places to visit within close-ish distance to London. St Ives (Cornwall), Bisley (Gloucestershire), Alfriston (East Sussex), Haslemere (West Sussex) are just some of the amazing places I've ventured to in the past year.

A few weeks ago my boyfriend and I headed for a country break to Devon for a long weekend. We caught the train bright and early on a gorgeous friday morning and before too long we were driving along the tiny country lanes in East Devon in search of our bed & breakfast. Listening to BBC Devon and watching field after field and horses and cows go by, we felt ourselves slowly being de-Londonised... There it was our turning along a tiny dirt track, past the nearest 'village' Southleigh which consisted of a post box and village noticeboard. We passed a few farms and lovely converted barns and finally drove up the driveway to our bed & breakfast Glebe House, sitting beautifully on top a hill. My kind of place. Breathtaking views of the valley and surrounding farmhouses, wooden table and chairs for that night cap (or in my case peppermint tea) in the evening, and a welcoming host. I'd only just gotten there and I was already dreading leaving. Our host served us tea and cookies in the conservatory and then showed us to our room upstairs with views of the garden. It was a perfect location for exploring the nearby villages, beaches and Moors. We spent a day at the beautiful beach town Lyme Regis, a day in the wild and rugged Dartmoor national park and a day in idyllic and hip town of Totnes.

I'm all about staying local, and luckily there are seemingly never ending options in this very country...

A hidden gem in Jaipur

I have recently returned from a two week trip to India in which I stayed at a variety of hotels and guesthouses. Our specifications were basic – bed and air conditioning (it was hot hot hot!) – and as expected so was the standard of the accommodation. However there was one guesthouse, Pearl Palace in Jaipur Rajastan, that stood out because of the warm welcome and homely feeling they worked hard at creating.

On arrival I was handed a brilliantly crafted and carefully considered guidebook to the hotel and city entitled ‘An Alien’s guide to Jaipur’. It was created by the staff with the input from past guests. In slowmoves style, the guesthouse consider guests as pearls – being at the heart of the business. The slogan is engraved on the door of every room.

Most impressive is a beautifully designed roof terrace for guests to escape from the hectic pace of the bustling city below and leave your worries behind. The hotel features an elegant common room/ lounge where you can check emails, recline on a sofa, marvel the décor or read a book from their well stocked library.

Unlike other hotels we stayed at they enforce a policy not to tip individual members of staff. Instead they ask for you to donate in a communal pot at the end of your stay – a much less corrupt way of working and less stress for the guests!

http://www.hotelpearlpalace.com/

[Amy]