Sometimes a full work day means you really have to try hard to find time to get outdoors. And sometimes, when you find yourself somewhere you can’t resist, you just have to get up at 4am and run up that mountain.
In the Alpi Apuane, the Apennine National Park in Tuscany, there is not only a spectacular mountain range, peaking above 2000m in places and providing a mix of dramatic cliffs and ridge-lines asking to be scrambled. Most of the lower mountain slopes are also covered in thick forest, mostly from what I could tell, of beech with a few oaks thrown in. There were undoubtedly more species higher up, and when the woods opened out, steep meadow flanked the rocky summits. We are used to patches of woodland in Britain, and if lucky, even get to walk through sections that almost seem untouched. The Apennine National Park feels like the most sacred and beautiful of our woodlands on a vast scale, the land protected from agriculture and the trees forming an unbroken blanket over large valleys and down precipitous slopes.
Through this landscape there are trails, marked out in the European way by red and white paint on rocks and trees every few tens of metres and on bends. Each trail is numbered, and sometimes signposts are encountered. There is of course a debate as to whether this is appropriate in Britain, and many dislike it, but in Europe it undoubtedly leads to great walking and trail running on mountain slopes that would be too steep to go straight up, and woodland too dense for most regular walkers to find enjoyment.
I had two visits to the mountain valley near the village of Fornovolasco, and after sitting in a van most days, needed the running time. The mountains towering above the village were tempting enough, and so at 5am off I went, following the red line on the map, trying not to trip over in the dawn light, running up towards the ridge. This peak, Monte Forato, is named after a natural limestone arch on the summit of the ridge, like the handle of a giant buried amphora. I came up to it, not knowing it would be there, and there it was, a hole in the mountainside. From an hour staring at trees and the rocks in front of me I could suddenly see the sea, several miles and more than a kilometre beneath me. The ridge from Monte Forato north to Pania della Croce falls away nearly vertically on the western side, whereas the eastern side has grassy slopes above the forest I had climbed through. Along this ridge I ran, the sun making its way gradually over the snow-capped peaks to the east. This kind of running, followed by the rapid descent 900m down the mountainside back to Fornovolasco, is the bit where you can really fly. Before I turned to descend, I took a look up at the monster, Pania della Croce, 600m above me.
Five days later and I was back, on another work day, up at 4am on the only morning in two weeks in Italy that we’d had rain. I ran up through the woods again, my torch pointing at the track, trying to find the red and white paint to stay on course. My shoes slipped in the mud. I wasn’t expecting mud in Italy. Gradually, as I rose higher, the light increased, until when I reached the ridgeline I could make out the path in the gloom, and the mountainsides hummed blue. Clouds filled the valleys beneath me and spilled over the low point in the ridge, a temporary cloudfall. There was Pania della Croce, 1858m high, above me. I startled a herd of mountain goats as I ran up the flaky rock path, steeper than in the woods, causing me to go slower, sometimes to stop. I promised myself that I would turn round at 6am to give time enough to descend.
The path, climbing the flank of the summit cone, reached a point where I could see over to the northern slopes of the mountain. The route had become a game of jumping, trying to keep up a run whilst leaping onto rocks and skirting path hanging over long drops.
The view began to change. There lay another ridge path, to other peaks, and there a high mountain hut. I turned to look at the summit and in front of me was rocky scramble, a sometimes loose fine ridge of limestone. It was good to feel the rock in my hands. It was smooth and cool in the morning, a comforting essence of solid mountain. It was getting on for 6am but there was the summit cone, a well rounded dome from my angle, right above me. With a beating chest I experienced again that reason we mountaineer, to suddenly come face to face with sky on all sides, the mountain around and beneath you. I touched the summit trig point, and looked out over the Apennines, at the sleeping Italian villages and the Tuscan peaks, tooths above their foresty gums, lonely in the morning light. Spreading out from that point were other trails, leading to other peaks through other forests and other adventures. And I turned to run back down mine to the valley below.
Feet in the Woods 