Chapter 2 #2
Suitably refreshed, we thanked her and went back out to complete our journey.
A sign in the shape of an arrow, carved from a huge plank of wood, indicated a turn-off just beyond where I had parked, labelled Pian delle Marmotte.
There was an old Jeep with some very chunky tyres parked outside one of the houses, and smoke coming out of the chimneys of three or four other little cottages, but no signs of life.
A glance at the temperature gauge on the dashboard told me that it was two degrees below zero outside, so I couldn’t blame the inhabitants for barricading themselves indoors.
I turned right in the direction of the arrow and almost immediately came to a pair of metal gates. These were open, but the sign beside them was unequivocal. This read:
Pian delle Marmotte
Proprietà Privata
Vietato l’Accesso
Divieto di Caccia
Clearly this little valley was private property with no access and no hunting permitted. I wondered who owned it and could see why Selena had accepted the invitation to come and stay. I could certainly see the attraction for somebody looking to get away from it all.
The emailed instructions I had received a few weeks back had been quite clear that we should follow the track up the valley for roughly one kilometre, and this would take us to the villa.
I drove in through the gates and found that the track was actually quite a bit wider than I had expected, and I could imagine vehicles as large as trucks having no great difficulty in navigating it – as long as they didn’t encounter a red pickup driven by a couple of Neanderthals coming the other way.
Although the valley floor sloped down towards us, it was a relatively gentle climb, and the track was in better condition than I had feared.
By this time, we had risen above the treeline, and all around us was little more than a bleak landscape of rocks and scrub.
After almost ten minutes of bumping cautiously along the uneven surface, the sides of the valley narrowed until it looked as though we were coming to the end of the road and would be halted by a series of rocky outcrops and massive boulders.
Just as I was wondering if we had inadvertently taken a wrong turning, the track suddenly made a sharp S-bend between two rocky outcrops, and beyond this, the valley opened out again. I stopped to take in the view.
‘Wow, that was unexpected.’ Anna’s tone mirrored my surprise – and wonder.
What we were faced with was a remarkably flat area of grass, rocks and scrub, at least the size of three or four football pitches, bordered on both sides by steep, rock-strewn slopes that stretched up to forbidding cliffs and snow-covered crests high above us.
Straight ahead of us, the terrain continued to slope upwards, gently at first and then increasingly steeply until it, too, ran into steep cliffs at the base of a snowclad mountain, shaped like a lopsided pyramid.
Running down through this open area was a mountain stream that started way up at the snowline.
The ribbon of water snaked down the slope around massive boulders and over impressive waterfalls, and even from this distance, I could see the ice that had built up on the rocks around the falls.
I had no doubt that even my water-loving Labrador would be likely to find that stream decidedly chilly.
I now realised the significance of the name of the valley.
Pian delle Marmotte translated as the plateau of the marmots, and I had been wondering how anywhere in the mountains could have been described as flat. Now I knew.
‘What a beautiful place – I thought we were going to be squeezed into the bottom of a narrow valley, but this is quite something.’
As I spoke, I spotted the villa and couldn’t miss its Alpine heritage.
It was positioned roughly in the middle of the flat area and, as I had seen on the Internet, it was a large building.
I could now see that it had three floors, a gently sloping roof, and wooden balconies at most of the windows.
The roof was covered with massive stone slabs, and the overall impression was one of solidity and rustic charm.
I wondered when it had been built and how much it might have cost. This was no little holiday cottage by any means.
I glanced across at Anna. ‘Whoever owns this place must have deep pockets!’
She nodded in agreement. ‘You can say that again.’
Anna then repeated the question that we had been asking ourselves on and off over the past few weeks ever since the invitation had arrived.
‘I wonder who else is going to be here. Who is this mysterious friend of hers who’s in fear of his life?
Might he be an actor? Do you think we’re going to be mixing with a load of Hollywood people? ’
All I could do in response was to shrug my shoulders and set off again.
I followed the track to the front of the villa where we found a brand-new Range Rover, a bright-red Ferrari and a couple of other luxury cars as well as a pickup and a battered old Land Rover.
I parked my VW minivan between the old pickup and the Land Rover. I know my place…
It felt even colder up here than it had back at the restaurant and I was glad of my jacket as I opened the back door for Oscar to jump out.
Our breath came out in clouds and the gravel beneath our feet didn’t crunch – it was frozen solid.
Oscar didn’t seem in the least bit worried by the cold and immediately headed for a convenient rock, where he cocked his leg, sending an olfactory signal to all dogs in the area that he now took possession of the valley.
The sun had disappeared behind the surrounding mountains and it was noticeably darker down here than up on the mountain peaks, but then security lights burst into life, illuminating the parking area and the front of the villa.
‘Buongiorno, signori. Benvenuti a Villa Delle Coppelle.’
I looked around to see a man approaching us from the front door.
He was just wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and he didn’t look in the least bit cold.
I had a feeling I was looking at the friendly barista’s son, and he no doubt had been born and brought up in these conditions.
He was probably in his thirties, he looked fit, and there was a welcoming smile on his face.
I went over, shook his hand and replied in Italian.
‘Good afternoon, my name is Dan Armstrong, and this is my wife, Anna. Are you Paolo?’
He nodded and, after shaking hands with Anna, immediately squatted down to say hello to Oscar, who wandered over, his tail wagging good-naturedly.
‘We’ve just stopped at the bar for a coffee and we’ve been chatting with your mother.’
There was a cavernous woof from behind him, and an enormous dog appeared on the doorstep, studying us suspiciously.
Oscar is a big dog, but this thing was absolutely massive.
It had a thick black, brown and white coat and was almost the size of a small horse, possibly crossed with a grizzly bear.
I exchanged glances with Oscar, and the same thought was probably going through both of our heads: here’s hoping this monster’s friendly.
‘Winston, vieni qui.’
Paolo beckoned, and the dog trotted across to us.
I was pleased and relieved to see his tail wagging as he did so.
Oscar’s tail also started wagging, and the two dogs performed their essential canine sniffing ceremony before deciding that they were going to be friends, rather than enemies.
This was just as well, because Winston looked as if he could probably have swallowed Oscar whole.
I queried what breed he was and received the information that he was a cross between a Bernese Cattle Dog and a local breed of mountain dog whose name meant nothing to me. One thing was for sure: he was huge.