A Walking Holiday in Mugello by Rebecca Ford

It’s late morning when we stop for a rest. We settle down on a convenient rock and take welcome gulps of water. It’s October but the sun is unseasonably strong and we have to pull down our hats to shade our eyes. Far below us lies a lake, so green it looks as if emeralds have burst and somehow stained the water. Through my binoculars I can see a solitary duck, a dark dot on its otherwise smooth surface. The hills beyond are covered in a fuzzy blanket of trees and scrub, almost aflame with autumn shades of crimson, saffron, russet, green and gold.

We sit still, enjoying the thick silence. And then, from behind us, comes the sound of church bells. We turn and discover that it’s coming from a medieval monastery, perched high on a hilltop across the valley. It’s a sound that seems to stretch across the centuries. We sit and listen for a while, then pick up our packs and walk on.

We’re in the Mugello, on a self-guided walking tour organised by Headwater (T: 01606 720199 – UK number, headwater.com), who specialise in making walking trips easy. They book the hotels and transport your luggage (so there’s no need to lug a heavy rucksack around), provide transport to the start of each walk and also provide detailed notes to help you follow each day’s route – handy as Italian maps don’t show the same level of detail as British Ordnance Survey maps. Although we’re only around 40 minutes’ drive from Florence, this is an area that has hardly been explored by tourists. Consequently, it is wonderfully unspoilt.

Our first day’s walk starts from Fiesole, an Etruscan hilltown that the Romans found extremely hard to conquer. We take in sights like the Roman theatre and 11th-century cathedral, before getting onto the serious business of buying lunch. We purchase fruit and large slices of pizza, then read our instructions: they warn us that this will be ‘quite a testing day’. The road, Via Giuseppi Verdi, climbs almost immediately but we’re soon rewarded with a panoramic view of Florence. We keep puffing uphill and eventually reach a crag, on top of which a man sits cross-legged, meditating in the morning sun.

We make good progress at first, our route offering us tantalising glimpses of Florence, but then we manage to get lost amongst some olive groves and go back and forth for ages. Luckily, our instructions contain a suggested shortcut, and in the end we retrace our steps to a road, where we pick up the shorter route. 

Later that day, once we’ve rejoined the main walk, we climb a steep hill to a meadow scattered with wild flowers. Butterflies flit around, as large and colourful as tiny birds and Fiesole lies far beneath us. It’s worth the odd blister for this.

Our next full day’s walk is easier. We follow ancient tracks through thick chestnut woods, and at one point pass a burraia, a stone building where farmers made butter – they were used up until the 1960s. Later on that day we come to the ruins of Monte Rotondo, built as a communications tower for the Medici who came from the Mugello and retained close links with the area. That night we stay at Collefertile, a former hunting lodge, where Andrea Cerchiai the owner roasts chestnuts for us on the fire and pours us measures of his family’s l’elisir d’China – the recipe is a closely guarded secret but it’s a digestive made with cinchona bark, which once served as an anti-malarial.

Our final day’s walk leads through chestnut woods and open hills to San Cresci church, first built in the 12th century, and then down to the village of Sagginale where we picnic by the Ponte d’Annibale, a stone bridge built after the Roman conquest of the area. The last stretch takes us through terraced olive groves and fig trees, till we come down to the imposing gates of Villa Campestri, our last hotel. We sit down with a sigh in the elegant garden, unlace our boots and sip cool glasses of fruit juice. Bliss.

Planning a walking holiday in Italy? See our selection of stunning country house hotels in Tuscany.