MY ITALIAN ADVENTURE
EPISODE 14
THE STORY SO FAR:

I went on to continue my adventure in Romagna, Now to learn much more about this strange and wonderful place.

I had been kidnapped to the Magic Mountain! Met both the most powerful woman in the world and the Father of Italian Cookery. And I'd had the most amazing birthday party.

Then we explored the romantic hilltop castles, festivals and fireflies. Now it was time to show our work and this amazing place to professional travel agents. Finally, before the real clients came I needed to check it all out personally.

Angelo and I were to eat our lunch in this first Casa Spadoni restaurant. We were excited!

The restaurant has been created out of an 18th-century silk mill on the outskirts of Faenza. It is massive and incorporates a substantial owner’s residence now made into a 12-room luxury boutique hotel plus a lovely garden with pergolas. Leonardo and his assistant Beatrice have obviously spared no expense to make a substantial – about four hundred covers in three separate restaurants – and unique environ- ment. The overwhelming design ethos is fun, rustic, piggy and very retro-chic! Big oak tables, a massive, specially made cast-iron barbeque, kitchens and big ladies making fresh pasta by hand all on display.

We started our lunch with a selection of meats, relishes and cheeses. There were the most amazing Mora Romagnolo prosciuttos, salamis, tiny sausages and other bits of the sweet little pigs, plus fresh squacquerone, other local cheeses and fig relish.

For our second course, the pasta ladies had made us something special – a “bis” – two different pastas. Tortelli di ricotta a spinaci (pasta packets with ricotta and spinach) and naturally tagliatelle covered with a rich sauce of their own Mora Romagnola.

And our mains came from the fantastic, massive, specially-made barbeque – bits of Mora – chops, steaks, sausages, a beef steak thrown in for good luck plus the most delicious, perfectly cooked pork liver.

Of course, there were grilled vegetables, and, of course warm just- cooked piadina flatbread, naturally stamped with the Spadoni pig logo. There were white and red wines to accompany our feast – a sangiovese and a dry albana both from the Spadoni estate. Dessert? Of course, with the classic sweet albana dessert wine we had the ubiquitous Zuppa Inglese and little pannacottas and semifreddos.

Just down the road lay the erstwhile hub of ultra-exquisite European ceramics. After a thousand years of high-class production, Faenza is still big in pottery. There was a time when any European royal family simply had to have their Faience-ware to entertain their guests – and that was when there were hundreds of royal courts in Europe. And Faenza grew rich on the proceeds. Even now the main squares are stunning and the artisan workshops fascinating. Faenza’s position on the Via Emilia still helps in transporting its beautiful wares around the world. No time for gelato unfortunately even though Faenza housesone of my top dozen gelaterias.

I’d never heard of Forli until low-cost airline Ryanair called its airport Bologna-Forli and I flew into it on a visit to Bologna. Now I know the city for what it is. A rich and beautiful city of art with a deeply dark recent history.

Dusk is just falling in the beautiful main square, the piazza Saffi, and I’m just explaining to Angelo that the fine eagle-headed cast-iron lamp posts that surround the ornate square have been dual-purpose in their time. With its history of fascism, Forli can be quite a dark city. During the Second World War, local anti-fascist partisans were hung from the lamp-posts and after the war they provided a hanging- place for fascist collaborators. So apart from emitting light these lovely tall eagle-headed sculptures also emitted shadow.

So, we went for a stroll – in a quite different Via Emilia city of art – Cesena, I think, has the most lovely main square I have ever seen. On one side is the big bold golden-stone Malatesta fort with its wide opening for medieval horse-mounted troops to emerge, opposite the fort there is a row of pretty shops, cafés and good restaurants, on the other side a lovely park and finally a tiny road to a sweet little piazza. Everything in Cesena is pretty, authentic and comfortable. There is lots of interest and simply nothing threatening – plus it has a fabulous five-hundred-year-old library and the best gelateria ever.

But Angelo reminds me, it’s time for dinner. We’re off to the spiritual home of Romagna food and drink, culture and history – Santarcangelo di Romagna.

The moment I return to Santarcangelo I am filled with memories – about my visits to the great millennia-old fairs the city holds; the Bird Fair each September and the Cuckolds fair in November both draw thousands from all over Romagna for fun and food and wine-packed merrymaking. Great hordes jostle to buy and talk and sing. But also I remember my involvement in the International street (or in Santarcangelo’s case piazza) theatre festival – an open-hearted event if ever there was one.

Everybody I bring to Santarcangelo loves this city of medieval terraces on a hill so I always study them to see if they’ve got it – Angelo certainly had.

But I had a problem. There are two sensational restaurants in Santarcangelo and a half a dozen amazing ones, but we only had time for one.

There’s just two of us and there is going to be a lot of food so we had to recruit a willing partner – the lovely Ofelia – a local girl who loved food and could certainly eat! We started with the pork platter – prosciutto, salami, dried sausage, seasoned coppa (head), flat panc- etta, seasoned lardo (fat), goletta (cheek and throat), and testarda with pickles and squacquerone and ricotta cheeses. Then we had three pastas – the passatelli (made of breadcrumbs, parmesan, nutmeg and lemon zest bound by egg yolk and swimming in a rich chicken and pork stock), strozzapreti (strangled priest pasta – in a sauce of rabbit and artichoke) and gnocchi made of semolina and ricotta with a sauce of pit-aged sheep cheese, green beans and black truffle.

So, we got to the main course with little trouble and shared veal cheek on a bed of cooked mixed wild herbs, veal tripe in a rich tomato and herb sauce and slow cooked veal with mashed potatoes and black truffle.

Phew! But that wasn’t all. Apart from the pasta station that created our fresh pastas and the piadina station sending us baskets of warm freshly cooked flatbread from time to time, there was also a gelato station and one for totally yummy desserts.

Fresh squacquerone cheesecake with candied figs and almond crumble, ricotta cake with chocolate sauce, another Zuppa Inglese and an almond gelato with a pistachio cream.

That was certainly a big end to our day on the Via Emilia.

On day two after our exertions on the Via Emilia, we needed to get some sea air.

Those Romans had an eye for a good thing. As I said they needed roads to transport their troops to keep the locals in order. So, when they conquered up north – that is up to the Apennine mountains, they had to build a road over their newly-conquered territory. Obviously before the Via Emilia was built, they had to have a road to its begin- ning. But where? They naturally built a starting point – a city of course. At the end of the Via Flaminia, the road which took them from Rome to the coast at the end of the mountains, they built a city to be the start of the Via Emilia.

And not just any old town, they built a brand spanking new Roman one on the shores of the Adriatic Sea. Ariminum was complete with its Grand Forum, its two central streets the Cardo Maximus and the Decumanus Maximus and its triumphal monument (an arch to the emperor Augustus). On top of all that there was the beautiful Tibe- rius bridge and the biggest amphitheatre outside of Rome which held twelve thousand spectators. So Ariminum was big stuff – a worthy stop for any of Rome’s armies, diplomats, merchants – anybody, in fact.

Here the Via Flaminia stopped after leaving Rome’s Aurelian walls and wending its three hundred kilometres through the Apennines arriving in Ariminum in time for tea, or whatever.

Ariminum was the crossroads – at the Arch of Augustus you could choose either the Via Emilia to Bologna and Milan or the Via Popilia to Ravenna and (later) Venice.

For the next couple of thousand years it remained important and historic. In the middle ages Rimini, as it came to be called by then, was the home of the enormously wealthy and powerful Malatesta family who ushered in a glorious era of art and architecture.

And massive amounts of all this wonderful heritage from the Romans until now is still here for all to see. Roman and medieval Rimini is a real treasure chest.

But it wasn’t heritage that attracted Angelo and me to Rimini in the 1980s. It was the fact that the coastal bit of the city with its vast beaches, the birthplace of Federico Fellini of Dolce Vita fame had become Europe’s biggest, glitziest fullest-on mass tourism destination in about 1965 and since then its progress was mainly downhill. This meant that the over a hundred and fifty thousand hotel beds were available as cheap as chips and we wanted them to make and sell cheap holidays.

Rimini is a tale of two cities and now the bit we overlooked for years – ie the bit without a beach had become more interesting and we needed to re-explore the Roman bits, and the Malatesta heritage. A sensational and historic walk.

Just down the road from Rimini is the rather smaller and prettier resort of Cesenatico – our lunch stop.

The beach runs pretty much all the way from Cattolica in the south right up the Po Valley in the north. There are dozens of resorts from big to small, from really pretty to quite ugly – but the beach is the beach.

Cesenatico is unexceptional apart from two things: it has one of the biggest fishing fleets in the Adriatic and a port that was re-designed by Leonardo da Vinci. The port is fabulous, every metre is a photo opportunity and the restaurants, supplied by the fleet, are sensational.

I have a favourite restaurant and a favourite meal, which we sit down to share. Angelo and I have a long history of eating spaghetti alla vongole – possibly the simplest and most delicious and most more-ish pasta that exists. Added to the sight and smell of the sea those little cockles tossed into hot fresh spaghetti with a teeny bit of chilli, parsley, garlic, and a slug of white wine – sensational! In this little harbourside restaurant our massive helpings are served in big copper bowls – they always look like there’s enough for five at least.

There is no argument about the second course. It’s fritto misto for him and mixed grill for me. The key to deep-frying little Adriatic fishes is the batter – it must be light and dry not heavy and oily so you get the taste of the shells, the bones and the fresh, fresh, fish combined with the sweet airy batter – in Angelo’s massive bowl go little prawns, baby squid, fresh anchovies and small sardines plus a few fat shrimp. I try one – remarkable. And my simple mixed grill – skewers of grilled squid and prawns, a lovely little Adriatic Sole, grilled Branzino – what more could you want? A coffee and a rest after all that eating exertion.

It’s about an hour’s walk over the beach and through the pinewoods to Cervia – the walk is a delight and Cervia itself is a gem.

Time to rest for the evening; it’s going to be a long day tomorrow.

I love Pennabilli, not just because it’s a beautiful ancient town at the top of a hill with a fab cathedral, a lovely piazza or two and amazing views but also because it has a personality.

That personality was Tonino Guerra the 20th century renaissance man who chose to retire there.
Angelo doesn’t think much of Tonino – well he wasn’t Venetian was he? Tonino was one hundred percent Romagnolo. Mosaicist, screen- writer with dozens of films and three Oscars to his credit, poet, artist, musician and dynamic spirit.

But my memories of Pennabilli were wilder. Once a year this beautiful town absolutely comes alive, really alive. There is something happening on every street corner, every park, simply every nook and cranny. In May for four days beautiful Pennabilli plays host to the Inter- national Street Theatre Festival – hundreds of brilliant buskers, dance groups, bands, mime artists, comedians and conjurers, high wire artists, singers, musicians, mystics and more perform and thousands come to enjoy. On any street corner you can hear jazz or country and western, klesma or soul, rock-and-roll or hip-hop. Wild for this festival is too tame a word – once I stood aghast as a mechanical dragon plodded his way through the crowds grunting and moaning as he breathed out great gusts of flame. Naturally there was food and drink and dancing and gelato, naturally there are pretty artisan markets selling everything from leather masks to perfumes and sweets – after all this is Romagna!

And walking Angelo around the hilly parks, the local monasteries and churches, the piazzas and the viewpoints, I tried to explain about Tonino Guerra and the fab festival but to no avail. He was more inter- ested in our next stop – Sant’Agata Feltria.

Just twenty or so kilometres down river from Pennabilli, Sant’Agata Feltria is also stunning. It has a real fairytale castle, a magnificent piazza, the prettiest little wooden theatre you’ve ever seen and a lovely staircase with guiderails made like a long colourful snail by Tonino Guerra. But Angelo wasn’t interested in any of that his mind was set on truffles!

Sant’Agata Feltria has a big Italian claim to fame – every weekend in October the National Truffle Festival is held here. It is MASSIVE. Of course, you can’t eat truffles by themselves so everything else is on sale too. All over the place. There are hundreds of stalls selling abso- lutely everything – from dustpans to beautiful butter, from great hunks of meats and sausages to a hundred different types of cheeses, from lipsticks and shoes to every possible kind of local fruit, from sweets and chocs to dozens of types of dried mushrooms. And the stars of the show, the little beauties to which the main square of Sant’Agata Feltria is devoted and whose musky scent suffuses the whole town – truffles.

Angelo was in his element, tasting truffle oils and truffle paste in the piazza stalls just added to his appetite for more. Naturally tagliolini con tartufo was to be our lunch.

And the afternoon was spent doing a bit more sampling and shopping before we drove down the Marecchia river valley, hills studded with castles, to the biggest one of all – a whole republic with three soaring castles on a hillside, more a mountain really – the pocket-sized republic of San Marino up at the top of Mount Titano.

In my view San Marino really is a tale of two cities – one sacred, the other profane. Sacred San Marino is a beautiful, spiritual ancient UNESCO world heritage site with castles, cathedral, churches and cobbled streets, like Saint Marinus with high social aspirations and Roman law. The profane San Marino is too commercial to be true; its major industries were banking, gambling and selling stuff to tourists, lately, in particular, Russian tourists. As a result, many shopkeepers have taken Russian brides who now run their shops and stand outside grabbing passing visitors. Nonetheless San Marino is definitely the place to buy cut-price Ray Bans. And the views, on the one side to the hills of Romagna and the Apennine mountains, and on the other to the plain and the sea, are truly spectacular.

Before dinner, I just had to take Angelo to see San Leo, as different from San Marino as chalk and cheese. San Leo is also a spectacular mountaintop community but almost totally sacred and not a bit profane. It’s strange because the tale is that Saint Marinus and Saint Leo were buddies: both stonemasons, both coming from Dalmatia to help build Ariminum and both Christian mystic hermits. Be that as it may, both the cathedral built on a pagan site and the old, old community church are unbelievably beautiful, and spiritual. And the impregnable soaring, gaunt citadel prison is fearful.

There are too many good restaurants in San Leo, though, so I needed to shake Angelo out of his reverie before he noticed them. Into the car and off to dinner. At the top of another big hill.

Episodes:
Episode 1 Romagna Mia
Episode 2 Meeting the most powerful woman in the world
Episode 3 The adventure continues
Episode 4 More food and fun
Episode 5 Mona Lisa Mussolini and marvellous meals
Episode 6 Paradise in a bowl
Episode 7 My Big Fat Romagnolo Birthday Party
Episode 8 River Deep Mountain High - Romagna's Fabulous Castles
Episode 9 Fireflies, Cherries and Soaring Hills
Episode 10 Racing around Romagna
Episode 11 The Sublime and the Ridiculous
Episode 12 The Best of Romagna - will they love it like we do?
Episode 13 Food, food, glorious Romagna FOOD

TO BE CONTINUED
and more about Romagna at www.BestofRomagna.com

To enjoy the whole 241 page book full of Italian adventures you can buy  "You Lucky People" from Amazon.

INTERESTED IN TOURISM? TUNE IN TO MY IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS WITH TOP GLOBAL TOURISM PEOPLE ON BATH RADIO

AND GET DETAILS ABOUT MY ANNUAL SUSTAINABLE TOURISM REPORT HERE

MY ITALIAN ADVENTURE
EPISODE 13
THE STORY SO FAR:

I went on to continue my adventure in Romagna, Now to learn much more about this strange and wonderful place.

I had been kidnapped to the Magic Mountain! Met both the most powerful woman in the world and the Father of Italian Cookery. And I'd had the most amazing birthday party.

Then we explored the romantic hilltop castles, festivals and fireflies. Now it was time to show our work and this amazing place to professional travel agents. Finally, before the real clients came I needed to check it all out personally

Finally, before the real clients came I needed to check it all out personally, to do a full-on tourism stocktake of the area, as it were, so that at least I knew what it was all about... beginning with the power road which cuts Romagna in two as people rush from northern Italy to the Adriatic Sea.

Still a major route and the way that most tourists arrive, the Via Emilia was built by the Romans a couple of thousand years ago. The idea was that it would connect their new city port Ariminum (modern day Rimini) with Piacenza so they could whip armies up to the north in double quick time when revolts were threatened.

As the centuries unfolded the road proved useful for anybody who wanted to move fast for whatever reason. Naturally that attracted an assortment of travellers – and because the Romans had built their road with the mountains on one side and the fertile plain on the other, and they wanted to keep it as secure as possible, it was in their interest to foster the growth of settlements along the way.

Well known cities that have sprung up along the Via Emilia, and have grown prosperous and famous because of their positions, are Parma, Modena and Bologna. These are all in the western half of the road, but the bit in Romagna – the eastern half of the Via Emilia – has its treasure cities too, not so famous perhaps but equally intriguing.

The eastern part of the highway starts at Bologna so I thought it was a good idea to start there and work my way down. I knew too well the seductive power of Bologna’s food, and I was hoping that I’d be able to tear myself away from the city after only a twenty-four hour stay.

Naturally, though, such a massive undertaking as my whistle-stop tourism stocktake needed fuel in the tank to start – in other words a good meal. Where else in the world could you be a hundred percent certain of a good meal than in Bologna where for years I had been searching for a bad one to no avail! And the red city was an ideal starting point situated just on the border of Romagna halfway down the Via Emilia.

I’m totally attached to the concept of sustainability because it answers a great many of my internal questions. OK there are a great many practical issues like the world will be uninhabitable if we keep screwing it up, but the thing that really drives me is the potential glori- ousness of now. I was taught to really appreciate and revere what we have, to use it to deliver the best results and to try not to waste a bit of it. And in cookery that concept of no-waste, to me, is fundamental.

So to dinner in Bologna for which Angelo had arrived. Sat down at a local osteria, we discussed what to eat. First some ham and cheese – as usual, Angelo asked the waiter what the difference was between normal very expensive Culatello (the bit of air-dried ham from the pig’s bottom) and Culatello di Zibello which was their special starter that evening. The waiter said, “Fifteen kilometres sir!” As Zibello is the epicentre of Culatello production and it benefits particularly from the air in the Po valley – it is thought to be the best of the best. We were of course overdoing it a bit to have some sensational unpasteurised mountain-milk aged parmesan with the culatello but after all Angelo had lived in England for fifty years.

Both cheese and ham were extraordinary, served with care and concern for their preciousness, and totally, totally delicious.

Ready for our second course! We shared a tureen of the local speciality. As legend has it, an innkeeper in Bologna viewed beautiful Lucrezia Borgia through the keyhole in a door. All he could make out was her navel, so he created this pasta in commemoration. Tortellini are small pieces of ring-shaped pasta that have been wrapped around a filling, in our case a mix of Parma ham and pork loin. This pasta was made fresh that day and the little belly-buttons were swimming in a delicious broth made of Bollito. Bollito? The word just means “boiled” but actually it involves a whole capon (fattened cockerel), lumps of veal, beef and pork boiled for a few hours to produce the most deli- cious liquid to warm all your senses.

And our main course, and my favourite, roasted Faraona (guinea fowl) melt-in-the-mouth juiciness with crispy skin – Italians are so good at roasting! Sitting on a bed of hot spicy cabbage, with garlic and fresh chilli.

There’s a lot of discussion about Zuppa Inglese apart from its name – not English, not soup. For instance, which ancient licquer should you use to spice it? Rosolio or Alchermes? Anyway, this combination of molten chocolate, spiced Ciambella or sponge and custard is delizioso and we had it for our dessert.

It’s summer and it’s Bologna and in this city packed full of students (the world’s oldest university is still going strong and is probably the biggest in Europe) there is always something happening. Tonight’s event is a free film show in the gorgeous main square – the Piazza Maggiore. Not any old film but THE Romagna classic – Amarcord, the film by Romagna-born director Federico Fellini that truly encapsulated his homeland and his people. Although it won an Oscar it never got worldwide fame. I adore it.

Back to the little quirky hotel for the night, big Via Emilia day tomorrow.

Early breakfast in the hotel garden and Angelo and I talk about hotels. Personally I think that Romagna’s great strength is that there are no chains of hospitality enterprises. So, no chain hotels, restaurants, coffee shops or burger shops. Of course there are a few McDonalds and Holiday Inns dotted about but that’s about it. What, after all, would be the point in someone like Starbucks opening up in Italy where you have a million choices of bars all making and serving the kind of perfect coffee that Starbuck’s “baristas” could only dream of and at less than half the price? This, of course, is the same story for hotels and restaurants – every one in Italy is an individual establishment with an individual or a family running it with passion and always a committment to delivering something really special, something they think is a real world-beater. To someone who wants homogeneity and manageable standards it’s a nightmare, to me it’s heaven, and it always delivers wonderful, memorable surprises to tourists who want real, warm heartfelt hospitality.

In a world where everybody wants something different, it’s why I think Romagna represents the future of tourism.

So, we take the big walk around Bologna. I’ve been here many times and already checked out the forty kilometres of porticos and the seven-kilometre pilgrimage through 666 of those porticos to the hilltop basilica of San Luca plus the other main sights, including the two soaring towers. What I want to check now is the food market and three sights that I think are important – the fascinating seven-church complex of San Stefano which was originally the temple to the Egyptian goddess Isis, and the massive church of St Petronius with its sun calendar. Plus, I want to know a bit more about the university. Then we need to work out where to have lunch.

The food market is sensational and quite crowded even at this early hour. I can see now how it’s set to be a massive tourism attrac- tion – it’s old, it’s pretty, it’s fascinating, more importantly it’s a fantastic setting for luscious instagram pictures. I can visualise the masses visiting for their piece of food porn – just like the Red Light district in Amsterdam herded around by flag-toting guides to keep them out of trouble. Of course, they won’t buy anything, they’ll just clog up the alleyways – God knows what the stallholders or their local customers think, and I’m so pleased that my groups will be smaller and encouraged to taste and buy.

Anyway walk done, it’s time for coffee and I know just the right place. Zanarini is part of Bologna café society – great coffee and they’ll sell you a plate of mouthwatering ‘mignon’ patisseries to eat with it. Sitting out in the sun, perfect coffee and perfect miniature pastry, watching the world go by, what could be better?

Let’s go, it’s ten o’clock already and lunch is beckoning but our first stop is Dozza. Talk about nearly tourism paradise – Dozza has a photo stop every fifty metres plus sensational views, one stunning castle and one amazing shop. The reason that it has so many photo stops? The very pretty hilltop city has murals painted by invited artists every two years – the Dozza ‘Biennale’ and the murals are painted on Dozza’s pretty houses which makes an amazing and eclectic art exhibition of Dozza’s cobbled streets. The castle is pretty much intact and still beau- tiful and built by Caterina Sforza, a big-time aristocrat in her own right and inside nowadays, as befits a medieval castle, is a real treasure – the wine store of Emilia Romagna plus balsamic plus lots of other edible goodies – thousands of bottles in fact. Wine lover’s paradise. Angelo and I mooch, he buys, we go; he’s hungry, it’s nearly lunchtime.

And we (he!) needs an aperitivo. Time to drop in to see Augusto and Valentina at Zuffa organic vineyard. There’s nothing like their sensa- tional Sangiovese, selected for that showcase of Italy – the 2015 World Exhibition in Milan. With a special assessment by the Italian ministry of health – it’s just the thing to put Angelo in good heart for the day.

He is now desperate for lunch so we miss out Imola, another Sforza town and a city of art in its own right, and drive to Faenza. This is ceramic central and we decide to explore after our feast. Every Romagnolo man has a passion for food and wine and so does his wife – his ‘Azdora’ – and both of them know that they could make it big in restaurants, but Leonardo Spadoni has the money and the power and the knowledge to do so.

The first time I met Leonardo was in his palace in Ravenna. As he took me on a tour to see his works of art and his magnificent collection of classic cars, he explained his mission – no less than to bring Romag- nolo cuisine to global prominence. Together with his partner in the enterprise, agronomist Emilio Antolini, he had put together initiatives to bring back and popularise many old local foods, wines and specialist recipes. Together they had organised special food weeks and festivals, leaflets and advertising programnes to spread the word about delicious forgotten local cuisine.

Leonardo had made his international niche as the biggest miller in the area with the most modern mill and by creating no less than 300 different speciality flours. In such an agrarian economy as Romagna where everybody had such high regard for food, this was no mean achievement.

And Leonardo’s partner had achieved just as much. Emilio had invented a method of preserving grain so that it didn’t go mouldy. In an area where wheat was king – Emilio was its chief consort. He’d been able to purchase his own castle on the proceeds and fill it with modern works of art. And, like with Leonardo, his kitchen was the centre of his household.

The hub of Leonardo and Emilio’s empire was the piggery, and I had been privileged to be given a tour. Not, of course, the sort of piggery I had imagined, full of mud, muddy pigs and arks – the Fattoria Palazzo was palatial and totally high-tech modern. Paradise for pigs, you could say. Of course, they were able to roam in their own acorn-strewn woods, of course they got the best feed, of course they procreated well – and all of it was computer controlled to deliver the happiest, tastiest pork. Not just any pork – the local breed of pig is famous for its taste and its slow growing, nurtured and revered for its deliciousness all over Romagna on smallholdings in tiny herds – Emilio and Leonardo were trying to pull off a major coup, they had the best boars and a significant percentage of Mora Romagnola sows – their target was to produce the ultimate pork and the perfect prosciutto to compete on the world stage with the likes of Jamon Iberico the prized ultra-expensive Spanish ham.

So now Leonardo and Emilio controlled the production of the best-of-the-best staples of Romagnolo cuisine – ham and flour. Now they had started a small up-market restaurant chain to cook and serve their food in the very best conditions so naturally they’d recruited a Michelin-starred chef to manage the cooking.

Angelo and I were to eat our lunch in this first Casa Spadoni restaurant. We were excited!

Episodes:
Episode 1 Romagna Mia
Episode 2 Meeting the most powerful woman in the world
Episode 3 The adventure continues
Episode 4 More food and fun
Episode 5 Mona Lisa Mussolini and marvellous meals
Episode 6 Paradise in a bowl
Episode 7 My Big Fat Romagnolo Birthday Party
Episode 8 River Deep Mountain High - Romagna's Fabulous Castles
Episode 9 Fireflies, Cherries and Soaring Hills
Episode 10 Racing around Romagna
Episode 11 The Sublime and the Ridiculous
Episode 12 The Best of Romagna - will they love it like we do?
TO BE CONTINUED...

and more about Romagna at www.BestofRomagna.com

To enjoy the whole 241 page book full of Italian adventures you can buy  "You Lucky People" from Amazon.

INTERESTED IN TOURISM? TUNE IN TO MY IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS WITH TOP GLOBAL TOURISM PEOPLE ON BATH RADIO

AND GET DETAILS ABOUT MY ANNUAL SUSTAINABLE TOURISM REPORT HERE

MY ITALIAN ADVENTURE
EPISODE 12
THE STORY SO FAR:

I went on to continue my adventure in Romagna, Now to learn much more about this strange and wonderful place.

I had been kidnapped to the Magic Mountain! Met both the most powerful woman in the world and the Father of Italian Cookery. And I'd had the most amazing birthday party.

Then we explored the romantic hilltop castles, festivals and fireflies. Now it was time to show our work and this amazing place to professional travel agents.

The idea was that these travel agents would just love Romagna, our choices, our offers and our ambience so much that they would tell all their customers about it and come back with groups of nice Americans.

So, half a dozen at a time, Valentina and I showed our travel agents our Best of Romagna. They stayed in delightful country house bed-and-breakfasts, they tasted delicious wine in lovely vineyards, we fed them fabulous food in happy restaurants, and our Ravenna guide Cinzia intro- duced them to fifteen hundred years of colourful stories where they happened – in Ravenna. Of course there was much, much more – and they loved it!

They loved too the performance that Valentina and I put on. Our relationship was pretty relaxed and witty. I trusted Valentina enough to act as her straight man and our travel agents found their experi- ences not only deliciously informative but a great deal of loving fun too. They all went back home happy and enthused knowing that our initiative was something really special really authentic and certainly not mass-produced. We hoped that now they would spread the word in at least the twenty states that they’d come from. We hoped that they would enthuse their clients who we were sure wanted something more fulfilling than today’s commodity tourism.

Andrea Nicholas was the boss of Green Tourism, a world leader in checking out and certifying sustainable tourism businesses. Their inspectors visited hotels and tourism businesses around the world and checked that they were really sustainable and if so, they awarded them Green Tourism badges for their websites and brochures and plaques to put up above their doors. Simply said a Green Tourism-awarded establishment bought as locally and organically as possible, it managed its waste, energy and emissions and trained its staff in green initiatives. The idea is that this would benefit the business’ suppliers, its staff, its customers and, indeed, the world.

Ever since I’d started writing Sustainable Tourism Reports Andrea had been both a customer and a supporter and over the years I’d also helped her with marketing for Green Tourism. So when she decided to expand into Italy, specifically Emilia Romagna it was natural that I would help her set it up.

The initial set-up had started very successfully but in quite a small way and a year or so later she asked Valentina and me to check out the Green Tourism-awarded businesses in Romagna and help them with marketing.

The job was fascinating, there were over forty hotels to visit. Not only were we able to help them but also expand our own knowledge and the potential for more cooperators.

And visiting the Green Hotels for me was like a journey back in time. The area that Andrea had chosen to start her project was around Cervia and Milano Marittima, a twin seaside town on the Adriatic south of Ravenna and north of Rimini.

Cervia is an ancient port famous for its salt pans which were owned by the Pope in the seventeenth century and still now produce their famous sweet salt. It started its tourism in the early nineteenth century and has developed into a lovely little family seaside destination. Lots of small family hotels providing great food for breakfast, sometimes lunch and always dinner. In the season they are full up with Italians from the cities. It’s clearly a lovely holiday, there’s the beach full of activities, of course, with literally hundreds of beach bars keeping their bit of sand clean all the way to the sea, hiring out sunbeds and umbrellas. But apart from the beach there’s always something to do family-style.

From an economic perspective the destination is totally unsustainable. A season that starts in June, doesn’t really get into full swing until August and then closes down in September can never work without enormous pressures on the local social structure. Of course, families take the brunt of the work but, even then, it’s really a waste of potential. But that’s the way it’s always worked and Italians are slaves to tradition.

The food, though, for two and three-star hotels, is unbelievably good and the efforts hoteliers and their families make to keep their clients year after year are gargantuan. And its not just the quality – the commitment to healthy, local, fresh, seasonal menus would be aston- ishing anywhere else. And given that there are no hotel chains here cutting costs by delivering mass-produced crap to keep prices down, the minimal charges these little hotels make is astonishing. It’s just a pity it will have to change as the global march to sameness takes over.

But for the moment just imagine a basic family-run 30-bedroom two- or three-star hotel producing great breakfasts, massive buffet lunches and dinners comprising a good antipasto, two or three different pastas made that morning from flour and eggs, with sauces, a range of main courses, desserts, good coffee and acceptable wines – all locally sourced and seasonal, all for an Italian clientele who understand food and expect the very best.

I went back to the UK for the summer and then in the autumn Valentina and I started showing off our cooperators’ offers to our visiting American travel agents.

We had become so proud of them all and all of them had fascinating stories, which we understood better and better in the telling.

For many years I’d known that travel loses its true value when it becomes just a formula of accommodation, transport and price.

By now I had come to understand the level of thick necks that the Romagnolo people sported. Every small entrepreneur I met had a deep conviction on exactly how everything should be done. And our cooperators were no different.

Take our vineyards. At Villa Venti, Mauro was so sure that he needed to own his own vineyard and produce obviously perfect wine that after a short career in the rubber industry, he studied to be a sommelier, worked in a top restaurant, persuaded his wife and his family to work with him tearing down an old fruit farm, planting the perfect grapes for the terrain and lived on little more than fresh air for 5 years before his (perfect) organic, biodynamic wine appeared, while his wife Manuela slogged away in the kitchen and the terrace creating breads and jams and chutneys by hand from their own raw materials.

On the other hand, Augusto at Zuffa wine had the responsibility to carry on his grandfather’s work. Nonno had not become organic because he was part of any green movement. To him it was simple, his family deserved the best, they weren’t going to have to drink any old chemical rubbish – they would drink pure wine just like their forefa- thers had. Augusto had to get a degree in chemistry so he knew what to avoid and why, and on the way he created organic wines so good that they got noticed by the Italian Ministry of Health and chosen to repre- sent Italy at the World Expo. Obviously, Augusto is just as determined as his granddad was.

And at Fattoria Paradiso as we arrived there was always a noisy and colourful argument going on behind the scenes - God knows why they were shouting at each other. But this fourth- generation vineyard had a colourful history with superb wines and a superb wine library to prove it. The founder, great wine character Mario Pezzi, had created a truly noble vineyard in a truly noble medi- eval estate. He had re-introduced great indigenous grapes to the area, grown and matured world-beating rich sangioveses when everybody else had said they would not mature.

Poor American travel agents. Finally, they got it and loved it but, for the day after they arrived, they were totally fazed. When we said we were going to take them to a restaurant and its own farm they thought they were going to see a big homogenous establishment like they would in the USA.

In fact we’d take them to a campsite, with some chalets and a big restaurant full of local workers eating their lunches. And the Ameri- cans had no idea of sizes. I’d order some stuff and the waiter would bring some carafes of their own good wine and then troll up with a massive platter of assorted meats and cheeses for everyone. Plus a few baskets of their hot, just cooked piadina flatbread.

The platter would be piled high with the family’s own prosciuttos, salamis, collar, head and cheek of their own cured pork, ultra-fresh squacquerone cheese, and dozens of fabulous crostini topped with exquisite delicacies. Delving into the food and the wine they finished practically every morsel and sat back, sated. The nice waiter (they all were) cleared away. They thought it was all over.

Until the waitor reappeared with another even more enormous platter – this time loaded with three different sorts of pasta, hand made that morning. Usually there were tortellini stuffed with cheese and covered with sage and crispy prosciutto; there were strozzapreti (stran- gled priest pasta without egg) covered with vegetables, and always the family pasta speciality – tagliatelle with a fabulously rich sauce of pork, beef and sangiovese wine. Our guests were not quite so hungry for this course although the food was always miraculous, the Americans would try to finish. The waiter would clear away.

And then he would reappear. Now he would bring the main course! Usually great spicy pork sausages, big juicy meat patties, enormous pork chops, great long thick slices of bacon, beef and veal steaks, all grilled to perfection on a roaring open fire and all from their own animals.

Plus, the grilled vegetables – fat deep red tomatoes, courgettes, aubergines and red peppers – also grilled, also their own produce – plus superb potatoes, crisply roasted with rosemary and Cervia sea salt. Delectable. A hush would descend over the table, draughts of wine would be quaffed as energies were recouped to deal with this feast... and of course, more hot piadina would be brought.
Done with everything they could eat, our guests would sit back in their chairs – full warm and happy.

When the desserts and the dessert wines were brought.

One dessert was always Zuppa Inglese – what? English soup? Well, a very traditional Romagnolo dessert actually. It’s a concoction of sponge soaked in Alchermes – an ancient cochineal liqueur – covered in a rich egg custard and melted chocolate.

Or, if you couldn’t eat a dessert, there was always the option of dipping rich eggy Ciambella sponge into sweet late harvest Vin Santo. Coffee of course, naturally with a range of home-made ‘digestivos’
– usually including Limoncello, Banane and Licquorice.

Done? It’s time to go and walk off lunch usually with a tour around Ravenna and its amazing Byzantine heritage of glorious glistening mosaics. The imperial Roman Capital of Galla Placidia was always a highlight of the visit for our American travel agents. How could they resist a little time travel? Back 8 centuries to where Dante’s bones were buried then back 9 centuries to the Franciscan monastery – then straight back nearly 17 centuries to the Ravenna of Empress Galla and
21 centuries to the Roman port begun by Emperor Augustus.

Hot and hungry work this time travelling – lucky that Ravenna provides a home for the gelateria that currently occupies number 1 spot on my list of great gelaterias! This one is on the outskirts of town and is simply amazing, so it should be if it’s top of my list. Anyway, its gelato is organic (not as unusual as you may think but a big plus nonetheless – at least you know that there is no messing around with the ingredients). But the killer issue here is the family’s quirky tastes like beetroot gelato and blackberry and sage, arabica coffee gelato is amazing and for texture, just try the ricotta gelato: light and fluffy and totally yummy!

The American travel agents had amazing times in Romagna. So much so that they were more than happy to tell everybody about this new (actually old!) place to go.

Finally, before the real clients came I needed to check it all out personally, AGAIN!

Episodes:
Episode 1 Romagna Mia
Episode 2 Meeting the most powerful woman in the world
Episode 3 The adventure continues
Episode 4 More food and fun
Episode 5 Mona Lisa Mussolini and marvellous meals
Episode 6 Paradise in a bowl
Episode 7 My Big Fat Romagnolo Birthday Party
Episode 8 River Deep Mountain High - Romagna's Fabulous Castles
Episode 9 Fireflies, Cherries and Soaring Hills
Episode 10 Racing around Romagna
Episode 11 The Sublime and the Ridiculous

TO BE CONTINUED...
and more about Romagna at www.BestofRomagna.com

To enjoy the whole 241 page book full of Italian adventures you can buy  "You Lucky People" from Amazon.

INTERESTED IN TOURISM? TUNE IN TO MY IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS WITH TOP GLOBAL TOURISM PEOPLE ON BATH RADIO

AND GET DETAILS ABOUT MY ANNUAL SUSTAINABLE TOURISM REPORT HERE

EPISODE 11
THE STORY SO FAR:

I went on to continue my adventure in Romagna, Now to learn much more about this strange and wonderful place.

I had been kidnapped to the Magic Mountain! Met both the most powerful woman in the world and the Father of Italian Cookery. And I'd had the most amazing birthday party.

Then we explored the romantic hilltop castles, festivals and fireflies.

And now festival season was approaching BIG TIME!


Sant‘Agata Feltria is truly beautiful and it has many assets that make it even more attractive. It has a historic soaring medieval castle, a pretty wooden working theatre, lots of lovely restaurants and a complete range of cobbled piazzas. It is quite spacious but even then there are so many people that want to attend the festival that it has to run over four ram-cram-packed weekends rather than just one. In the event hundreds of thousands of visitors flock to Sant’Agata in October.

And all these visitors get great value. There are hundreds of stalls selling truffle-related things from dried ceps to truffle sauces and oils to the real McCoy – little truffles protected from the air in little glass domes. And because it’s the end of the season everything else is on sale too – there are dozens of stalls selling forgotten fruit and veg (plus the remembered ones as well). There are rows of stalls selling sweets, chocolates and sweet things generally – cakes, sweeties, spun sugar etc – winter is on the way! And there are many stalls selling cheese and butter and other dairy products. Plus of course the local fast food – piadina – flat bread stuffed with anything you want, mainly prosciutto, squacquerone and rucola, always warm and delicious. Performing bands strolled around to accompany singing and dancing and the 17th-century little theatre opened its doors. It was lovely.

Obviously, this was autumn after harvest so there were festivals cropping up everywhere and, as the truffle festival closed and the town swept up, Santarcangelo was preparing for the Biggie. I’d heard about the Cuckold Festival but this was the first time I would see it. Luckily, I had a couple of chaperone/interpreters in the shape of Daniela and Chiara.

The rain was just letting up and the clouds clearing a little as we got to an out-of-town parking place where we were to get the bus into the city. There were such massive crowds that the city itself was closed to cars. The bus dropped us off about half a kilometre from the main square but even there it was heaving.

Santarcangelo is a fairly substantial place but the whole city was crammed. I would not have been surprised if there were over a hundred thousand visitors that day.

Why? To eat and drink and buy and chat and watch and laugh and joke and hug and kiss and walk just like their forefathers had been doing for at least the last thousand years or so at the Fair of San Martino here in the heart of Romagna.

First we fought our way through to the main square where we could see the ceremonial arch now surrounded by heaving crowds and dozens of colourful stalls. As is usual at San Martino, many stalls display great bulls’ heads and suspended from the arch itself is a magnificent pair of bull’s horns. The idea? Men who are brave enough walk under the arch – and if the horns wobble – the cry of “Becchi” goes up as the man is accused of being a cuckold – his woman has given herself to another!

That emotional challenge over, we wander (or to be more exact push ourselves) around. Today Santarcangelo truly is the harvest land of plenty. Around the main square many stalls have joined together to create great tented emporia stuffed full of autumn delicacies – mush- rooms and truffles, great sausages and cheeses, enormous mountains of sweets and other sugary treats, cakes and jams and chutneys. And, of course there are gallons and gallons of great wines, olive oils and vinegars – from all over Italy, and in particular from the local area – fertile Romagna. And each emporium was stuffed full of local people too, great extended families, young couples arm-in-arm and loads of kids – buying, feeding, laughing, cavorting often all at once – after all the harvest is in!

Of course, there are fruit and vegetables too, food-packed stalls, great heaving tables, trays and plates, baskets and boxes, crates and crates of it. Gleaming fruits and vegetables I recognised and local speciality exotic fruits and vegetables I didn’t. Here in Santarcangelo you can find anything you want at the Cuckolds Festival – succulent Cardoons of course, volpina pears for pickling of course, perfect lumpy yellow quinces, of course, piquant medlars, of course, plus dozens and dozens of forgotten varieties of apples and pears and berries. All beau- tifully presented and delicious.

Here there is everything you need for your home and everything you need for your wardrobe and everything you need for your kitchen and your garden plus many, many things that you never knew you needed.

So the Cuckolds Fair was enormous and amazing, gargantuan and packed with local people walking and talking and eating and falling out of cafés and restaurants and bars and gelateries obviously set to eat and drink the city dry.

But as I was to learn, all this too was just a rehearsal for a region- wide festival that would start in just a few weeks – on the festival of the Immaculate Conception on the 8th of December, panettone would be baked and the Nativity would be ushered in.

In Romagna I found out that Christmas festivities, fun, frolics and feasting are taken very, very, seriously. I drove around the whole area to see it.

Romagnolo people just love any celebration and Christmas is the big one, so in Romagna, all the fun and the magic of Christmas is of enormous importance! Villages, towns, cities and seaside resorts enthusiastically compete with each other with the quality of their Christmas markets, Christmas lights, decorations, and Christmas music – but above all they take great pride in their nativity scenes.

Artistic nativity scenes that involve whole towns; nativity scenes on the water or on boats; live representations with hundreds of figures; delicately made in sand or salt; small mechanical moving masterpieces; multi-ethnic nativities and scenes in grottoes. Every- where in Romagna local people treasure their own evocation of the traditional Christmas story

All along the coast, and up in the hills, historic townships were vying with each other to create the most outstanding traditional (and non-traditional) Nativity scenes and Christmas Markets. Schools and families and local church groups were making all the little figures, the cribs the shepherds, the angels and the stars – painstakingly putting them all together and making little scenes everywhere and out of anything! There were pottery nativity scenes, ones made of wool and cotton and glass – everything!

I saw the Holy Family up on hilltops, inside castle cloisters, on beaches and in harbours – made of simply every material you can imagine – and often animated, both acted and mechanical. Here in Romagna Christmas was not Christmas without a Nativity Scene and pretty much every Nativity Scene has its own little Christmas Market, where locals could buy Christmas presents and stock up on Christmas delicacies, decorations and other delights.

So, in the historic Leonardo da Vinci-designed sea harbour of Cesenatico, the ancient ships in the open air maritime museum had Nativity Scenes on each; in the historic Pope’s salt-port of Cervia, there were harbourside and beachside nativity scenes; in the hilltop vine-coated wine and olive oil townships of Bertinoro, Brisighella and Longiano there were hilltop and castle court nativity scenes. And in the important cities such as Cesena and Forli, Rimini and Ravenna – massive acted Nativities in the historic centres.

Rimini hosted two spectacular nativities made of sand and in the heart of glitzy Milano Marittima there was a stunning work of art using modern animation techniques. Created using glass fibre, the one hundred elements in this setting glow at any time of day or night.

Top of the pops for many – close to home for me – were the magical mechanical nativity scenes in the local pilgrimage site – the convent of the SS. Crocifisso, in Longiano. It was full of complex and fasci-nating mechanical movements, lights and sounds. From here, I did the nativity walk to different nativities throughout the entire historic centre, the museums and many other surprising and beautiful settings.

Santarcangelo was showing a mechanical nativity scene inside its labyrinthine grottoes, this featured a 200-metre underground nativity walk. Animations, lighting and special effects dance over one hundred statues, created by hand by a local sculptor, Davide Santandrea.

Another original representation along a spectacular underground pathway winds through the Solfatara grottoes, the old sulphur mine in Predappio Alta, near Forli.

And in the mountains, in soaring Montefiore Conca, the entire centre of this medieval village became a natural stage for the nativity scene. More than 150 figures and thirty episodes are represented along a path winding through the streets of the town and it ends with the Nativity set up in the magnificent Arena.

My favourite – Pennabilli’s starry scene winds around a picturesque hilltop from its ancient cathedral.
But the knockout big jobs were San Marino and Sant’Agata Feltria. There were many more of course that I didn’t see, but to be honest wherever you were in the world Christmas wouldn’t get any more full-on than San Marino.

High on the top of Mount Titano, soaring above the Adriatic coast, are the ramparts of a unique World Heritage Site – the tiny, atmos- pheric Republic of San Marino.

The quirky mountaintop state that refused to join Italy, that kept itself aloof from the European Union (and that scored the fastest-ever goal in the World Cup!) creates possibly the most magical Christmas- time event in the world – rightly called “The Christmas of Marvels”

Naturally there is an ice-skating rink; naturally Santa Claus sets up his village (with lots of elf helpers) to help lots of kiddies – of all ages – make Christmas delicacies and wrap presents; naturally there are stunningly beautiful nativity scenes, naturally there are traditional carol concerts in the atmospheric churches, naturally there is a vast array of duty-free and branded outlet shopping in the pretty boutiques. naturally there are Christmas shops stuffed full of Christmas goods from decorations to cuckoo clocks to electronic Santas – everything – and naturally there is a fabulous Christmas Farmers’ Market full of glorious local produce.

Everyone can Christmas shop to their heart’s content (and often to their wallet’s benefit!). From a vast range of world-famous designer brands to great Christmas decorations – and authentic cuckoo clocks! There is even a superb local Farmers’ Market selling local panettone

(naturally), local honey, local preserved fruits, local salamis and prosciuttos, local nougats and sweets and much, much more.

Plus, Christmas music, plus Christmas lights, plus stalls selling hot Christmas drinks, sweet Christmas confections and delicious stuffed piadina flatbread, plus the aromas and sounds of Christmas- time everywhere.

Exhausted by it all, I returned to the UK for a really quiet Christmas in Bath and a few winter months with my family.

By the next year, I was pretty much ready to knock Best of Romagna on the head. I felt that I was getting nowhere fast.

However, I had been in touch with Valentina over the winter months since we met in Dozza, and she seemed pretty enthusiastic about the project. Anyway, she said that she was prepared to do some work with me and see what happened.

As it happened, her blend of rather caustic wit, Teutonic concentra- tion on detail and bursts of determined energy looked like it would keep me in order for a while plus I was desperately in need of her energy if I was to continue.

One other asset that Valentina had was her language. She was a joy to talk with in English, her range of words, phrases and construc- tions was enormous and she played her instrument of words with enormous flair. Usually her language was colourful but that added to the impact and the fun. So Valentina was fun to work with, plus I have never known anyone who could eat more pasta as quickly and I could depend on her, so life became a bit of a ball.

Quickly we got to work creating a team of friendly locals and preparing to show Romagna to travel agents from the USA.

The idea was simple, we would choose such brilliant co-operators with such brilliant products and services and full of such passion for what they did that what we created with them would shine out as the real Best of Romagna. Naturally we chose people that we liked and could have fun with too. After all what we did had to be happy and it had to infect our clients with joy or it wouldn’t work.

So, we ate great food at super restaurants, Valentina tasted wine at great vineyards, we inspected lovely small hotels, we talked to artists and guides and lots of other people.

Finally, we had our initial team of 20 – all people we really liked and that were full of passion and professionalism. And they were full of fun. Our dream team in fact.

We had three great vineyard owners: one historic, one organic and one biodynamic. We had five great restaurateurs, all offering different twists on great Romagnolo cuisine and all making their pasta fresh by hand every day. We had five hoteliers all with different styles of hotel but all giving warm hospitality with superb service, we had a master cheese affinateur, an olive grove owner and oil producer whose family had been doing the same thing in the same place, wonderfully, for seventeen generations.

As this is the land of Federico Fellini we had a couple of great film- makers and philosophers. Naturally we had an organic piadina maker. We had a bunch of artists in metal and fire and other unusual stuff. Above all Casa Artusi had become a partner too – here our clients could experience the culture of Romagnolo food started by the “Father of Italian Home Cooking” – Pellegrino Artusi.
Then we put together our offers and created our website.

Our customers would get what we considered was the very best of Romagna food and wine, history and culture sights and hospitality. They would stay not in five-star chain hotels, but lovely local country houses with warm hospitality, they would visit beautiful ancient historical places with local people and they would enjoy wonderful local food and wine.

And then we welcomed our American travel agents.

Episodes:
Episode 1 Romagna Mia
Episode 2 Meeting the most powerful woman in the world
Episode 3 The adventure continues
Episode 4 More food and fun
Episode 5 Mona Lisa Mussolini and marvellous meals
Episode 6 Paradise in a bowl
Episode 7 My Big Fat Romagnolo Birthday Party
Episode 8 River Deep Mountain High - Romagna's Fabulous Castles
Episode 9 Fireflies, Cherries and Soaring Hills
Episode 10 Racing around Romagna

TO BE CONTINUED...
and more about Romagna at www.BestofRomagna.com

To enjoy the whole 241 page book full of Italian adventures you can buy  "You Lucky People" from Amazon.

INTERESTED IN TOURISM? TUNE IN TO MY IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS WITH TOP GLOBAL TOURISM PEOPLE ON BATH RADIO

AND GET DETAILS ABOUT MY ANNUAL SUSTAINABLE TOURISM REPORT HERE