Marble & Dora gets high

Lets face it, Italy is the home of marble. But still when you get to see where it is made, it is still a shock.

I love a quarry town. Everywhere you look, stacks of blocks, ready to be cut down into slices. Usually the town is untidy. Recently cut blocks and then old blocks, covered by weed and vegetation. Eventually they will be shipped away, probably for some building facade. We had passed through Carrara before we had time to get the camera out. It was getting late, and we had an Aire to get to and we didn’t know how long it would take to get there.

We had chosen this Aire because it was free. Not on the coast, where you normally pay €15-20. Ours was inland. This is certainly a false economy, it would inevitably cost the same in fuel to get to this remote place.

What we didn’t realise was how remote it actual was, but you can just get a hint with those mountains on the skyline.

There are massive benefits to our approach;

We are not great fans of the coast, beach and internationally approved gaudy trash.

We like to get away from the hoards.

The places we get to see are rarely in any guide book.

The driving and the views can be absolutely superb.

After Carrara we headed to Massa. It took us a couple of attempts to leave the town, partly due to our lack of detail map and none use of a sat. nav. Much more fun.

We are surprised about the steepness of the road, we expected it would follow the river valley. Dora complains slightly as we swing round another switchback, gaining more height.

Soon Massa is far below us.

We continually look to the horizon. A mountain chain is a formidable barrier in front of us. We expect the road will gain some height, then turn right and follow a valley.

We are passing through small villages, clinging onto the mountainside, stacked upon one another like Guisando.

And we are still just climbing, up and up. We pull in frequently to let the odd car pass us. The road is not well travelled. The crest of the surrounding mountains gets nearer, but is still far enough in the distance so that we cannot see where the road starts to travel along below the ridge.

Back in the other direction, we get a faint hint of the hoards at the coast, already settling in for the afternoon. It will be satellite TV watching Pop Idol no doubt.

Large gashes appear in the mountain side. From below it had looked like snow, it was as white as snow but much too regular in shape. Now we are nearer we get to understand.

 

These are quarries. Carrara marble quarries.

Way up here, near the top of the mountain they are chiselling out large blocks of stone and hauling back down this road Dora is now dragging herself up.

Some of the trucking roads are really precarious.

But this is all very well, we are getting to the crux of this mountain now. There appears to be no way Dora is getting over that crest, surely. But we can still see no other way.

We had never envisaged such a mountain route.

Clouds and snow carpet the peaks.

And then we reach it, the snow line, the road is clear and seems well ploughed. It is also reasonably wide. We discuss our options and agree to push onwards, but we half expect that the road will be closed a few kilometres further on.

And soon we are just below that crest. We are actually going to pass over the top of this mountain. We are going to have to put a new Dora icon on our map to say she has scaled her first peak. A tunnel, near the top, preventing her first summit!

Can you believe Dora got over that.

We drop down the other side. It is desolate and barren landscape. The odd village is cocooned in snow. We continue to drop.

We pass a beautiful turquois green lake.

 

 

We eventually head out of the valley and down onto the plain. It is dusk now and ready to settle down for the night. Unbelievable we still get to our aire at Gallicano. The aire is already occupied and there is just one place free out of four. The others are not occupied, just long term storage we think. It will be a quiet night.

GDR