Work Away Italy - globetrotting slaves for hire!
So, we're off travelling again! It's a new plan for the rest of the summer after my ankle injury. Gone for now is the walk down Italy, although we've kept the mark in the right page and we still mean to read the book (and it's not just one of those optimistic bookmarks littering millions of copies of 'Das Kapital' halfway through the introduction or stuffed with disappointment at page 17 of Lord Jim).
To avoid too much confusion it is best to point out that this was actually written a couple of weeks ago and so any references to 'yesterday' are in no way to be taken as meaning 'yesterday'. Got it? We have got more written and are planning to operate at a slightly smaller lag with reality very soon, 'tomorrow' or sometime...
Returning to what I was saying, what we've got planned now is a month each in Italy, Greece and Spain. We're following this by a winter in the skiing regions of France. How marvellous it is to swan off around the world just for kicks! Well, sometimes I wish my motivations were as easy to untangle as that. Even if they were, we're working all the way.
It's starting to get complicated enough that it's resembling a real life. Let me try to get the boring details of what is swiftly seeming like a workable plan out in the open for you. We're doing workaways for the next three months which I am interspersing with photographing weddings. Following that we're running a chalet over the winter. The hours will vary from light to ridiculous and to top it all off Julia has found a job for her spare time. I'm having to organise contracts, separate flights for me and a shed load of other things related to self-employment – as is Julia. Our administration overhead in terms of time is roughly the same if not higher than it was in the UK. Something tells me that this means we've got it right this time.
It does raise the question of why the hell are we bothering to escape if we've combined all the difficulties of home with all the hardships of travelling?
It's tough to convince myself of an answer at a restless 1.30am sitting in the midst of Gatwick Airport's slumbering quarters. Home, bed, TV, oven and a liberal selection of my general stuff look bloody good when seen through that particular prism.
So why? Actually it's really simple. It's awesome. Any life that aims to be sustainable for more than a few weeks develops strings and with that basic proviso in place it's suddenly all about priorities. Obviously when there are two of you that issue is impossibly obscure but is usually helped by the received priorities of children, love, house ownership, financial comfort and generally a few others inherited for some reason from someone. Julia seems to be happy to place these in abeyance for a couple of years and I am just about confused enough to go along with whatever seems to be happening at the time.
This all leads us here. It's Italy, the weather's about five degrees too hot to permit rational thought and it's still getting hotter. Julia during her siesta looks like she's sleeping off a heavy night on something too good to be legal but all she's really done is a couple of hours weeding. I'm bearing up well and although I sweat like a pig (I have no idea how much pigs actually sweat so it's all bluff) I'm feeling OK.
We're lodged in a swish caravan in an eccentric Umbrian enclave performing a range of marginally specified tasks for an interior designer (who we assume must be brilliant). It's been great fun so far. I've taken over the kitchen by sheer force of control-freakery and Julia is reading a book on drinking your own urine.
The journey was typically, money-savingly awful. Got to the airport the night before for an Easyjet flight at 7.20am. One hour bus ride to Milano Centrale train station. It's a monster. Not content with throwing madly inflated Art Deco at you it then plasters Roman imagery anywhere a clear wall might seem too tasteful; the kind of ego-trip that could only have been possible under Italian fascism. The marble columns that support the entrances to the platforms are now held up by rusting steel beams. Walking through it I understand that I probably should have been impressed; it left me cold.
It turns out we shouldn't be here at all. Due to the kind of mix-up I previously thought only happened in farce we had been double-booked with a couple of Israelis called Ziv and Keren. Our host had been happily communicating with all four of us imagining we were but two and the first time anyone noticed anything was wrong was the day before we got here when the first 'us' – Keren and Ziv – called up to say they would be a day late, while the second 'us' – us – sent an e-mail at roughly the same time to say we would be there at about 7pm and please pick us up from the station. It confused the hell out of everyone but the upshot is there are five of us here instead of three and so we'll probably get more done.
Well, yesterday the other us arrived. Ziv and Keren are leaner and more tanned than Julia or me; they mix this with an aura of general practicality. So far all I've been able to bring to the table is tomato sauce and lemon sorbet. I happen to know for a fact that our host would prefer a two-and-a-half-times-life-sized Elephant that doubles as a viewing platform and venue for drinks receptions.
Our host seems to be one of those rare beasts, a guy with big ideas and the capacity to see them through. One very big physicality he likes wrestling with is his hot air balloon. I am dying to go up in it and take some photos of/from/at/inside it (yes...inside.). To whet my appetite (well, actually it was a 'balloon MOT') he fired her up today and from close up a balloon is one of those things so big that it has wrapped back around from huge or enormous; you just look deeply into the other person's eyes and call it big. The five of us were running around it like ants trying to control a tennis ball while me, Ziv, Keren and Julia were being told that this was in fact a very small balloon.
Much like our little adventure is a very small adventure. I have two friends about to embark on a trip eight weeks long which blows me and Julia out of the water. Callum and Will are embarking on a journey to the “last great unknown” on the planet. One of the few destinations left so unpopular it's without even satellite pictures, let alone traditional cartography. Central Indonesia, home to possibly the last remaining on-foot trade route, cut through jungles and mountains so irrelevant to outsiders that no-one bothered to map them during World War II (when the rest of Indonesia's maps were drawn up). They are being funded by the Royal Geographic Society and have a simple brief; to see what's there. And carry a baby pig – they're being told it's for science but we think it's a late April fool.
Much like us then, or something.
J-P
Ballooning, the heavier than air part.
Our host test fires his burners in front of passengers and ground crew.
Last time around I mentioned that our host was a hot-air-balloonist. Well, a couple of days ago I had my first taste of this most serene of past-times. It wasn't from the gondola (this is the balloonist word for 'basket') but from the ground. There was a flight going up in the morning and I asked if I could tag along and take some photographs. Yes, I volunteered to get up at half-four and watch people mess around a bit with balloons. Those of you that know me well will be as amazed as I was that come 4.45am I was in the shower whistling.
For some reason I partially understand the balloon flights here are restricted mainly to dawn and dusk. I think it's plain less efficient getting a hot air balloon to work when the ambient temperature is already nudging 40ºC.
It's 5am and the day's already an hour old. This is the hard work behind ballooning that you don't normally get to see.
Fuel efficiency matters when your fuel comes in large titanium tanks (or bombs, as they are sometimes called) filled with liquid propane. When you're three thousand feet up running out is not an option. Our host tells us that if the worst did happen the balloon would not come down any faster than a parachute. He says he's never been unlucky enough to test the theory.
Balloon flights tend to be about an hour long (although as Jones, Piccard, Branson and a few others will tell you, they can be much longer). The morning ones start at or just before dawn as the under-slept crew wrestle with an implausibly large piece of fabric (the actual balloon itself is called the envelope, feel free to use that snippet as a weapon while in conversation with ignorant people). The actual inflation is probably best described in photos.
A gondola is still largely the wicker construction that you'd imagine. Apparently they've tried other materials but none of them survives landings as well. It does make them heavy, though.
After laying out the length of the material, all that's needed to inflate it in the first instance is a small petrol-powered wind machine. If only Julia still had her hair, I'd borrow it for a ridiculous photo-shoot.
The balloonist surveys his envelope as the crew await a new posting.
A few blasts of propane soon start to send the envelope upright. Standing in close you can really tell why and even if you're behind the burner each burst feels like a hot desert wind.
Before you know it the balloon is upright. The crown line (so called because it attaches to the crown of the balloon at the top) is used for inflation and deflation and the crew member whose job it is to hold it has a simple brief – keep it taught but be ready to let go. Anyone who has been on a yacht knows you don't wrap a rope around yourself if it's attached to something large and sail-like.
And then they're gone. After a few minutes gazing up at the sky wondering if the wind would carry them anywhere at all suddenly it did and those on the ground had to scramble to catch up, leaving only me and the pilot's dog with nothing to do.
Scruffy as hell but the best player of fetch I have ever seen. Isn't happy unless he has at least one burr on his coat.
We did get a few good views of the balloon while it was up there. Its serene visage belying the raw heat of the burner and the flap of the wind that I am really looking forward to when I get my chance in the gondola.
This balloon is moving at about 10mph but with the right (or wrong!) winds, balloons can travel much faster – in one recent publicised hop from Exeter to Kings Lynn (yes, in one go!) the balloon made it above 50mph in stretches.
After about an hour in the sky, the balloon lands.
A very expensive poly-tunnel.
This was a particularly easy flight to crew, it seems. We had visual contact most of the way and the balloon landed not too far from a road and the ground was easy enough that we could pull it even closer. After that the recovery crew had a quite absurd battle with 90,000 cubic feet of mildly heated air and then the champagne popped and we all lived happily ever after.
Comment? Analysis? Well, I'm not sure about this ballooning lark yet. Maybe I've just been unlucky but of the three planned flights so far only one has happened. That said - the people who went up seemed to really enjoy themselves. I'll keep you posted as to when I finally get up there and see what all the fuss is about.
Going up?
Orvieto - the place where J-P forgot to take enough photos...
Orvieto is just south of Chiusi and we were urged to visit it on our first day off, particularly for the cathedral. Everyone's seen cathedrals. Big, architecturally-rich monsters, with lots of paintings inside.
But this one was different.
Inside out, to be precise.
Here is the fabulously ornate front, where you can exhaust yourself trying to pick out all of the details.
Warily we moved inside, wondering if taking everything in might last the entire day.
And here's the inside, or most of it at least (the outside sides looked the same). This cathedral has a lot of its fripperies (I may get into trouble for calling them that but a better word is not coming to mind) on the outside and then a surprisingly simple inside, helped by chairs being set out in only half the space. The back half is wide open and it made it feel more cavernous and awe-inspiring, at least for me.
There is the altar area...
...which takes some staring too but is not as ornate as the front. There are also two side chapels – when we were there one was dark and in the other photography was strictly forbidden – which catch the light beautifully at the appropriate times of day. The one catching the light and in which photography was forbidden was fenced off and cost a few euros to get into. Our theory was that when the other chapel (opposite it) caught the light, the fences got moved and entrance into the second chapel was charged for while the first became free. Terrible scientists that we are, we didn't hang around to see whether this was true.
All in all, a place with something new to say about how a cathedral could/should look.
Orvieto is a lovely place. There's the new part, at the bottom of a hill and the old part, on the hill, ranging back to the medieval period. We spent the whole day in the old part, taking the 'cable car on tracks' to get up there (yes, Julia and JP in 'not choosing to walk there' shocker).
At the top we discovered a collection of alleyways that led us first to the cathedral, then to a wonderful ice cream shop where we discovered 'mirtillo' ice cream (that's myrtleberries in English, I believe) and a wood turning shop where we resisted the strong temptation to buy everything in sight – beautiful bowls, ladles, bottles, boxes etc etc.
Lunch was wild boar pasta. I had first tried this the night we had arrived in Italy – it's delicious. I had an interesting run-in with the waitress who brought us ¾L of water instead of the litre requested from the menu. When I asked why, she said that they had no litre bottles (fine) but that the price would be the same (not so fine). Apparently, as there is more demand for water in the summer, they cannot always get hold of the litre bottles they have on the menu. As I continued to look unimpressed, the waitress grudgingly suggested that she might charge us less for the smaller bottle. JP, having understood very little of this conversation was left with the “I should think so” that I barked, half at her and half at him, as she walked off. All ended well though as we were not charged the full price and we retired back to the ice cream shop to celebrate.
Unfortunately, there are no more photos to show you as JP was in a 'I'm only taking pictures of spectacular things' mood and Orvieto is not spectacular, cathedral aside, just very pretty. I shall therefore leave you with our other discovery of the day, which was the shop of an Italian artist called Verdirosi. His paintings sell for 600-15,000 euros but for us mere mortals, he also offers prints for 10 euros which is a pretty good deal. We nearly bought one but JP decided that he already has too much to take back to England when he returns in September so we contented ourselves with longing glances and a promise that we'll buy something from the website in the near future.
All the paintings come with poem-like explanations, somewhat wordy and, let's be honest, somewhat pretentious at times but the paintings themselves are wonderful. We were both drawn to several and had settled on two in particular...