Tuscany Barga Walk / Hike

Sensone is located about 11 kms from Barga in Northern Tuscany, Italy, in a little village called Renaio. in fact you can walk out of Sensone Retreat, walk the mountains all day and never hit a metalled road.
One of our little walks is from the Mostrico Bar at Renaio (a great place to eat Pizza and drink the local vino), down to the City of Barga. Although Barga is a City, it has less than 10,000 people and is a stunning place to pass the time, full of music in the summer (famously for Bargajazz and Barga Opera festivals, as well as great food!
Trekking in Tuscany can be very varied, ranging from rolling hills, rugged coastline to stunning mountains, and Renaio certainly has the stunning mountains!This particular walk is relatively low level leaving from 1090 m and dropping down to 410m and is a departure from our usual range of high mountain itineraries.
Leaving Renaio, we ramble down the old mule track towards Barga, penetrating the Beech and Chestnut forests and diving down the steep valley. We also use this particular walk for our Horse Trekking Holidays, so although the terrain is steep, its certainly not hard - even for our for our four legged friends! If we are in season, we may even find some Porcini mushrooms, the much sought after fungi that we find in abundance in this area.
The views over the Garfagnana is stunning and we have fine views of Sommocolonia - an ancient hilltop Roman fort that was also a key stronghold of the German army in second world war. This village although picturesque now, was the scene of ferocious fighting and a key part of the Gothic line, I will tell that particular story in another blog post!
For a short time we join the old road before heading off on the old mule track, dropping down through Acacia woods and little cottages nestled comfortably into the mountain side. Finally after after two hours of walking we  drop into the new part of Barga and head down to the Alpino bar for a well earned beer!

Walking down is easy, but walking back is more of a challenge as we rise over 500 metres, but its a sobering thought that the children of Renaio used to walk this road to and from school each day - perhaps taking 3-4 hours of walking each day to get a secondary education. Even more impressive is the thought that they still did the same walk in deep snow during the winter nights with no lighting.
I have talked with many locals who thought nothing of doing this walk every day, some even had to walk a further 8 kms to catch the train to Pisa or Lucca to get to University or indeed work.
Perhaps if our children had to do the same walk, they would have taken their time at school a bit more seriously!