Hello again. This time from Umbria, although only briefly as tomorrow I drop into Viterbo and hence Lazio, home to a football team for whom Paul Gascoigne, I believe, once played. Oh, and the Citta Eterna...Caput Mundi...Rome!!

But for me, despite the temptation to plunge along the SS No. 2 Via Cassia, and finsh my pilgrimage, Viterbo holds an allure which cannot be denied. Not only one of Italy's most beautiful Renaissance gardens, but the Terme dei Pape - the Pope's own personal sulphurous mud bath. Yes, it is my intention to spend the day blobbing in gloop and having some handsome Italian give me a massage. I am glad to say that I don't think Pope Ratzinger is due to join me, as we all know the German's predeliction for letting it all hang out in the steam room.

But rather than future delights, what of the past, I hear you cry? (you really should modulate your voices). Well, Florence and Umbria have heartened me somewhat, despite the continued travails of the non-open tourist offices. Having seen the cave where St. Francis of Assissi hung out before they built the Basilica of his name, I also feel rather more fatalistic about things. If F of A could live in a 2 by 4 scrape in the ground, I'm sure I could tolerate a night in a field. (though he did die of TB of the spine, so more than one night is not recommended.

But, to be honest, Tuscany's wonders have won me over - most obviously in the stunning 'Renaissance landscapes' of the Val d'Orcia. They are competely unnatural, designed even, by our forebears into an 'ideal of good governance'. But, oh, they are ravishing, and not only I think so, since they have been recognised as extraordinary by UNESCO.

Imagine if you will long slopes of ochre, chocolate and putty coloured land, dotted with the occasional lone cypress. Or long avenues of said cypress snaking along a road, or punctuating the sky along the ridgeline. Each shallow fold seems more perfect than the last, since the men who work this land are truly artists of the ploughshare. They work the fields into all sorts of shapes, so the ridges and furrows catch the light in different directions. It is so empty and tranquil after the big cities of Tuscany: almost a desert under the shifting shadows of an enormous cloudscape. I cannot imagine how it is in the height of summer. Absolutely simmering, and rather surreal, I shouldn't wonder.

On top of all this, of course, are more of Tuscany's gorgeous mediaeval villages, perched above the haze at around 500 m. I have to thank Albino of Saluzzo once again for guiding me to Pienza, truly the most glorious location of anywhere I have visited. The place itself is listed by UNESCO for being a perfect little mediaeval hamlet, but it is the huge panorama of the Val d'Orcia which makes it magnificent. In the morning, I walked along the parapet of the citadel watching the blue valley emerge below, and in the evening, I watched the long shadows fall and the villages glittering above the dark valleys. Radicofani, in the far distance, is the last bastion of Tuscany, and seemed to float in the sky at 800 m.

As you can imagine, all these hill top villages meant lots of slogging climbs, but I am getting used to the effort - reward bargain that is Italian cycling. A racing cyclist who passed me the other day sang out, quoting U2 I believe, 'It is a beautiful day', and I had to agree with him.

Since then, I have loitered with the Sisters in Cortona - a film set city (quite literallly, since they filmed Under the Tuscan Sun here). Despite its fame, it is really rather nice, with the upper town a delightful maze of alleys, Etruscan walls and olive shaded piazzas. Then Perugia, another Etruscan city and home to the famous mentor of Raphael, Perugino (Didn't like him either: very glossy and loud with these horrible little heads of cherubs everywhere). Thence to aforementioned Assissi, and one of the holiest places on earth, which hasn't stopped the Italians building a bloody great autostrada beneath it. But this didn't mar its splendour, at least not for me, since I was adopted there by the marvellous Rita.

Every time I think I have had my lot with Italy, someone like Rita emerges to persuade me otherwise. She was a tour de force; the kind who should work in the tourist office, since she did a lot better finding me accommodation than they did. They were shut - quella sorpresa - and so she took me under her wing and invited me into her shop and spent a good half hour ringing up nuns trying to find me a place for the evening. Since it was coming up to St. Francis's birthday, this was no easy task, but my, she was up to dealing with it. I don't know how many in the 152 convents and monasteries in Assissi she called, but I ended up with the Sisters of St. Brigid of Sweden (except they all seemed to be from India). Thus, I stayed long enough to see the famous frescoes of Giotto that literally changed the history of art forever. But I find I must go and eat, so you will have to wait for that, and the first use of empirical perspective, simple narrative, human scale and 3D volume...

You are, no doubt, relieved.

Ciao

Vx

PS Before I go, I must just mention the simple gorgeousness that was Todi. Another one of those turreted Town Halls with external stairs going to a balcony above the Piazza, just like a mediaeval painting. It occurred to me there that this is what Italy at its best is: the familiar backdrop for so much; from art to the settings of the plays of Shakespeare. Such places are still the hub of civic life: Todi's piazza was a throng of strolling people, old men taking coffee and children playing some kind of British bulldogs. There are times, usually on Sunday mornings, when the church has disgorged the locals into the square, when Italy more than lives up to its billing. Not in the big things, but in the small joys of day to day civic life. I am beginning to realise that Italy is about the extremes of pleasure and frustration.