5th to 6th May 2005 - Hiking in the Land of my Ancestors
How on earth did someone get the bright idea to pack up their whole family and move to an unknown land on the other side of the globe 150 years ago? Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that they moved from a village perched (quite literally) about 2000m up from the valley floor to the town of Horsham, about the flattest place in all of Victoria... Mum thinks that perhaps there was just one trip too many into town to collect the milk.
Poor old Bradley dragged himself out of bed on this fine morning with a look of cold dread plastered on his pale clammy cheeks. The afternoon before I'd carefully selected a lovely stroll, but he wasn't quite as positive about the expedition as I was. After all, the map only said that our destination (a little stone cottage serving local bread, cheese, cured meats and jugs of local wine) was about 2000m above the elevation of his bed. The track I'd chosen for the ascent was a measly 4 or 5 km long, and the one down was a sinch at about 2.5km long. What was wrong with that I whined, it's just a 7 or 8km walk with a 2000m high mountain in the middle! We should be down by the lake at the Miralago bar again in no time!
He wasn't convinced.
It wasn't long (in truth that statement might not be 100% accurate) until we were sitting at the big wooden tables outside the stone cottages at San Romerio, 2000m above Bradley's bed at the valley floor. You can see two people with red tops at the table - I'm the one to the right. Lunch was really lovely, and we scoffed it down like a pair of hungry wolves. Wine was nice too. I think we had two jugs that day...
It struck me as strange that the people from this area were mum's relatives, and not dad's. You see my dad has this special gene that I'd never seen expressed in another human being before this day. If the truth be known, my dad is a hard core stacker. He can stack anything! And no ordinary garden variety stack will do! Dad's stacks are a masterpiece - whether they're broken bricks, beans, firewood or cherries, dad just can't help himself! If you want to check for yourself, just empty a box of matches on his table and come back a day later - they'll be stacked with precision: all the red ends together and perfectly aligned, even neater than they were in their original box before you tipped them out. There have been many times in my life where he's unstacked my firewood pile and given me long meticulous lessons in the art of stacking correctly.
Need I say that when I saw this here stack at San Romerio, I was stunned to realise that this came from mum's ancestors, and not from dad's! Either way, I knew dad would treasure a picture like this! At least he'll know that he's not alone in the world. He has a soul mate, a fellow stacker, somewhere in San Romerio, Switzerland!
This is me inside the church at San Romerio. It's built on the top of a cliff (literally) that drops hundreds of meters towards the valley below. This opening faces Italy, which starts right at the end of the valley.
With our bellies full and the local wine buzzing about our veins we headed out of San Romerio.
Destination Miralago, on the valley floor at the left end of the lake, where there's a bar and a train back to Bradley's bed at Le Prese. Only 2.5km straight down!
Half way down there're a couple of old stone houses. It really would be an amazing place to live.
And I found a Swiss beetle too.
Just in case you were wondering about the depth of the leaves, we recorded the detail. Usually Bradley has feet on the end of his legs...
I know you'd never have doubted it but yes, we did make it back to the lake eventually!
But by god we were sore, and strangely enough Bradley didn't get rudely woken at 6.00am the next morning for another excursion.
