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Walking and Eating in Tuscany and Umbria | 
 enlarge | Authors: James Lasdun, Pia Davis
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
List Price: $16.95
Buy Used: $0.58
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Avg. Customer Rating:  21 reviews
Sales Rank: 755727
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 4.3 x 1.2
ISBN: 0140264604
Dewey Decimal Number: 914.5504929
EAN: 9780140264609
ASIN: 0140264604
Publication Date: April 1, 1997
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Amazon.com
Tuscany and Umbria are famous for both their glorious scenery and their superlative cuisines--could there be a more perfect vacation than walking through the countryside, stopping to dine along the way? In Walking and Eating in Tuscany and Umbria authors James Lasdun and Pia Davis offer readers 40 itineraries ranging from half-day walks to routes stretching over several days. There are written directions for each walk as well as a map. There is also a chart for each itinerary outlining travel alternatives such as buses, trains, or private automobiles and a list of restaurants along the way. Each itinerary describes the sights and terrain in charming detail, and though you might want to supplement this book with other guides specific to each area, this one does a nice job of balancing the demands of cuisine and countryside in a single volume.
Product Description
James Lasdun and Pia Davis offer forty walks through the spectacular countryside of Tuscany and Umbria. Arranged for the utmost flexibilityfrom half-day outings easily accessible from a city base to day walks that can be linked together in a seriesthe itineraries combine the pleasures of walking and eating with one of the most enchanting landscapes in the world. Calling at medieval hill towns, secluded Benedictine abbeys, spring-fed pools, and Etruscan ruins, Walking and Eating in Tuscany and Umbria enables travelers to discover Italys finest delights in a singularly rewarding way.
Featuring:
New and revised walks
Clear, easy-to-follow maps
Suggestions for local food and wine and the best restaurants, hotels, and family- run accommodations
Half-day, full-day, or overnight itineraries
Practical tips, including information on climate, what to take, what to wear, and much more
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| Customer Reviews: Read 16 more reviews...
 Great walks! July 7, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The walks in this book are great!
With this guide, you can truly get off the main tourist routes and into the Tuscan back country for a very different experience of Tuscany.
In mid May 2007, we did the walk from Greve in Chianti to Radda, and a walk from Pienza to Montepulciano. On the Greve to Radda walk, we hiked in the woods, saw wild boars, and spent a most enjoyable two days in Volpaia, a little town of 50 people, some hundreds of years old, surrounded by vineyards in the Tuscan hills.
The walk from Pienza to Montepulciano was beautiful. The classic Tuscan views of hills, cypress, winding country roads.
If you enjoy walking and want a non tourist view of beautiful Tuscany, I do strongly recommend this book!
New Updated Edition Available Now December 8, 2004
20 out of 20 found this review helpful
The original edition of this book, written nearly ten years ago, needed
updating, so we went back to Italy, this time with two young children.
We've updated the original walks and restaurant reviews and added some new
walks and locations. If you are thinking of buying the book, make sure you
have the newer edition (both editions are available on Amazon, and the newer
one is also cheaper). To order the new edition type "walking and eating
2005" (without the quotation marks) into Amazon's search box.
If you have any questions about the book, please feel free to email me at:
walkingandeating@aol.com. Over the years we have had so many letters from
people about the book, saying what a difference it made to their holiday. We
hope you enjoy it.
Don't forget Umbria! December 1, 2004
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
We used this book for a trip to Umbria with our children ages 9 and 12 this September and thought it was great, both for the walking and the eating. We have been to Tuscany several times and wanted to branch out to Umbria on this last trip, and can only say we wish we had done so sooner. We stayed in the lovely town of Norcia, and did the "san Eutizio" walk: an amazing adventure with children! Norcia was an easy place to be with kids, the hotel recommended in the book was extremely friendly, the town had such a safe feeling and enough of interest (particularly the gelato bar) to the kids to keep them busy. The walk - one of the longer ones in the book - was an ambitious one for kids, but gave them an exceptional feeling of accomplishment at the end, and they loved the beautiful abbey at San Eutizio, especially enjoyable on our visit because as we ate dinner at the tiny restaurant next door (the only building in the immediate environs) there was a wedding going on, which spilled into the outdoors. While my husband and I lingered over our "vino," the kids went inside the abbey and mingled with the wedding party stragglers, a few of whom - along with our kids of course - crawled through an ancient tunnel behind the altar, an action that is supposed to cure all ills.
We also went up to Castelluccio, the mountain village about 15 miles from Norcia, which was stunningly beautiful, remote, and virtually deserted. There is a small restaurant there which was fabulous, and the sunset behind the austere Sibillini mountains was a stunning backdrop to our outdoor meal. Next time we would plan to stay in this tiny village overnight.
Note: we had the 2005 edition, and the friend who recommended this book says the san eutizio walk wasn't in the original.
Finally a new edition of this classic! December 1, 2004
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
I first discovered this book on a trip to Italy in 1999, and after my first walk I was hooked. The walk (Lamole Ring walk) took me to a place I never would have found on my own, and the experience of visiting this lovely off-the-beaten-track hamlet and its beautiful surrounding countryside on foot turned out to be the highlight of my vacation. The restaurant recommended (the only one in Lamole) was also one of the best I've ever eaten in, and was at the same time friendly and not terribly expensive.
I used the book extensively when I returned in 2003, doing seven more of the walks (mostly in the "Southern Tuscany" section) and they have all been splendid. However, I encountered several changes (more on the restaurant side than the actual walking side, though there were also some of those), and was hoping the authors would do a new edition by the time I was next lucky enough to be going to Italy. I think I was probably one of the first people to use the new edition when I went this September (2004) and I am happy to report it was excellent! I drove first to Lamole (where - in spite of another reviewer here who must have been looking for an American-style parking garage - there is no problem whatsoever in parking your car: it's just a tiny hamlet and you can park anywhere you like) and found the restaurant to be still at the top of its form, still friendly and unpretentious. The walk has been improved in that formerly there was a stretch on the road (admittedly untrafficked, but road nonetheless) which has now been replaced with a shortcut through the woods. After my walk I drove up to hotel/hostel/restaurant on top of San Michele, and spent the night there, amidst the sighing evergreens there at the top of the mountain. Sublime!
One further observation: Don't buy the old edition! Amazon only shows the old edition unless you type "2005 edition" into your search!!!
 Not if you have a car... October 21, 2004
27 out of 34 found this review helpful
My wife and I just returned from a two-week trip to Tuscany and Umbria where we had planned to do several walks in this book. Although the book does not even pretend to address tourists traveling by car, we assumed that would not be a problem, and we were wrong. For example, we set out from Lucca to do #13, a walk in the Garfagnana. Naive American drivers need to know that the road to the trailhead, while beautiful, is a heavy industrial corridor with a large number of trucks as well as cars driving to defy death at high speed on a road that is often only wide enough for one vehicle, usually with no shoulder, often skirting sharply around mountain switch-backs with steep drop-offs. Traffic frequently stops as truck and bus drivers try to figure out who is going to back up, and how, to let the other go by. If you have a car, absolutely only consider doing this walk on the weekend. Also, we attempted #2, the Lamole ring walk. On a typical mid-October day, overcast and drizzling, there was absolutely no place to leave the car, which was very disappointing considering the effort to get there. The one walk we did do, #23, the Monteriggioni ring walk, was ok, but a very long stretch of it, from just after Abbadia a Isola to C. Giubileo, is continuously up a steep grade on a gravel road, mostly with minimal views, and gets to be a real drag. Also, and possibly not the authors' fault, the directions fail near the presumptive end when you encounter CAI signs with different numbers than the authors indicate, and trail options that don't quite fit the description. We got lost and went much further southeast than we should have, adding a pleasant enough but unplanned hour to the trip. Also, the Montauto spur access is completely overgrown now with thick, high thorn bushes at least 20 to 30 feet deep behind the well near the beginning. In sum, I was left wondering how big the target audience for this book is. Although we had a car, we were told that bus schedules are not particularly reliable outside the larger cities. After spending two weeks in the Tuscan and Umbrian countryside, it appears to me that, with the amount of time typical travelers have, the hassle and waste of time taking (and waiting for) busses to and from trailheads away from the major centers would just eat up too much precious time. Although there is a lot of good information in this book and it's obviously an earnest effort, we did not find it very useful. If you want to hike or, per the authors' distinction, walk, in Tuscany and Umbria, and have a car, this can be one source of many to help you out, but you need other resources. We got some good info at an information center at the base of Orvieto that led to the best hike of our trip, but note that information centers seem to be closed for unknown reasons frequently. Next time, we plan to do more research, learn a little more Italian, learn more about the CAI system in general, and buy more maps and resources before we go.
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