Castel del Monte (no cling peaches 🍑), Rocca Calascio and Terni

Woke up very early this morning to the sound of a helicopter. It was picking building stuff up nearby and delivering it bit by bit to the refuge on top of the mountain. Guy said it was just like an airborne Keyline delivery! Set off for Castel del Monte – a ‘must see’ according to the two chaps we met yesterday. It’s one of the towns in the area that’s had a lot of money injected into it by some billionaire, who is trying to revive the old villages and towns using local and traditional building materials. The place was dead apart from building work going on left, right and centre. Even the church had scaffold around it. One of the houses looked like it had had a lot of fire damage and was still blackened and smelling of smoke.
We moved swiftly on to Calascio – a ruined castle clinging to the top of a cliff face. Only problem was, you couldn’t take motorhomes up. We set off on a three kilometre yomp uphill at 11am with the temperature swiftly rising to 33 degrees. I had sandals on, which was stupid – they were flat and 3k isn’t very far normally. The road zig-zagged up and up for what seemed like forever. Didn’t have water either – don’t know what I was thinking of; I always carry it normally. Collapsed in the refuge at the top and revived ourselves with coffee, water and a panini which turned out to be two slices of very dry bread with ham & cheese! The castle ruins were ok but again the town was kind of dead. Walked back down partly through a babbling brook short cut to find Rufus cool as a cucumber snoring in the van! Would prefer to take him with us always but he just cannot manage walking very far now. ☹️
Moved on, heading back west towards Orvieto and stopped at Terni because we’d had enough. The city is famous for St Valentine but isn’t remotely romantic! It looked on the map like we were surroundedby big parks to walk Rufus in. It turns out one is a cemetery and the other (in true Italian style) is half built and not maintained- the other half is fenced off with weeds growing through!