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The Apennines: Italy's Unknown Mountains

To give you an idea of how we arrange our walking holidays, here are the full notes for one day of our popular walking holiday in the Apennines in Italy. You can see the care we take to provide the detail needed for a successful walking holiday: notes about the culture and history of the region to enhance your enjoyment, and the walking instructions clearly laid out to ensure you walk safely and confidently. Remember that our walking holidays are unguided, so you walk using these notes, together with detailed maps. Below is the general information which accompanies the walking notes.

General Notes

What you need to take

Our walking holidays are geared to people who are 'regular' but not necessarily 'frequent' walkers. You should aim to wear shoes in which you are comfortable walking for up to 7 hours, possibly over wet and rocky ground. If you have purchased new shoes, do make sure these are properly 'broken in' before you leave. This is a walk on which it is essential to wear good-quality walking boots, preferably with ankle support and soles adapted to rugged terrain, and to bring good-quality waterproofs.

The more into summer your holiday falls, the more you need to carry with you protection against sun as much as light waterproofs. We like to walk with sun barrier cream, glasses, floppy hat, waterproofs or thin anorak and a variety of layers to peel off or pull on as required. Your suitcases are taken from hotel to hotel so you are able to pack quite a variety to cope with all kinds of weather. You will need a small pack to carry any changes for each day's walk – plus room for picnic, camera etc.

Traditional Emilian cuisine & hospitality

The hotels and restaurants which welcome you on this walk offer a traditional welcome and a kind of cuisine with which you might not be too familiar. In addition, English is not widely spoken, and we recommend you take a phrase book, as any efforts to speak Italian will be much appreciated! We thought that it might be a good idea to give a little extra information here, with apologies to those who might already be familiar with the language, the region and its cuisine. Emilia is renowned for its robust country cooking based on classic pasta dishes and excellent meats; local trout is also excellent.

Breakfast (prima colazione) is not considered a major meal in most of Italy, and is 'continental' in style, with bread and jams the usual mainstay. Best accompanied by coffee with hot milk (caffé latte) or tea (thé, pronounced 'tay', with milk, latte, or lemon, limone).

Picnic Lunch (cestino pranzo) will usually be of sandwiches (panini) containing hams or other prepared meats and cheeses, with fresh fruit. Please ask if you would like more, perhaps an omelette (frittata) or some wine.

Dinner (cena, 'chayna') is at a fixed time in all the restaurants on the walk, usually 7 or 7.30. The hotels, as is usual in country restaurants in the region, do not offer a written menu; instead, they will present the meal each evening, which calls for a little understanding of Italian! Meals will begin with soup (minestra) or a pasta dish (see below for regional specialities), followed by a meat course (or occasionally fish) accompanied by side dishes (contorni) of vegetables or salad. Cheese (parmiggiano reggiano and pecorino are local specialities) and fruit or dessert conclude the meal. If there is anything that you do not wish to eat, please let the restaurant know, and they will try to arrange something else.

The tradition of chestnuts

The entire territory through which you pass is marked by the subtle relationship of man and nature. In particular, man has survived here until recent times with a strong reliance on the cultivation of chestnut trees. Chestnuts were harvested in October, and involved great toil, even hardship. The chestnuts were gathered and deposited in a stone casone, of which you pass numerous examples, a stone building of two simple storeys. The nuts were shovelled into the upper part of the building, over a slow-burning fire which would be kept alight for several days. The dry chestnuts would then be taken to mills to be ground for flour to provide winter sustenance. You might be lucky enough to taste local specialities that still use chestnut flour. We particularly love ciacci ('chatchee'), small pancakes made from chestnut flour and stuffed with a variety of savoury fillings. There are virtually no working mills left and the once carefully kept chestnut woods are now wild and uncared-for, symbolic of the rural deradication and depopulation that the villages have undergone in the past twenty years.

Wines and other drinks

Of our restaurants, only the Montegrande has a written wine list. At the others, there is the house wine, or a relatively restricted range of bottles, which you can see in the restaurant. Please have a look at them and choose, or ask the hotelier to recommend one.

Prices everywhere are very reasonable, and we would highly recommend that you try the local wines: Lambrusco Secco di Sorbara or Grasparossa is an excellent accompaniment to Emilian cuisine and is a world away from the generally feeble Lambrusco wines exported to the UK; Sangiovese wines from Romagna are very much like Chiantis, full-bodied and fruity, and there are pleasant, light white wines from near Bologna. Tuscan Chiantis are also often available from just across the provincial frontier. If you would like a coffee at the end of the meal, you will normally be served with an espresso unless you request otherwise though the Italians would consider it very odd to drink a cappuccino after a meal; where the restaurant has a bar this can, of course, be requested.

Some local specialities

Pasta. Tortelli are like ravioli, and can be filled with meat, cheese or vegetables such as pumpkin or mushrooms (or combinations of these). They can be served with ragú (meat sauce), sugo (tomato sauce) or burro salvia (our recommendation: a little butter and herbs, allowing the flavour of the pasta to come through). Tortelloni ('big tortelli') are slightly larger. Other local kinds of pasta include gnocchi and lasagne.

Meats. Manzo is beef, maiale pork, vitello veal, pollo chicken. Cured hams and meats are very much a local speciality – prosciutto crudo is what we know as 'Parma ham', and look out for mortadella and salami.

Vegetarians and others with special dietary requirements should check that the hoteliers have understood their needs; many pasta dishes can be adapted to vegetarian diets.

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