Four in the morning to six at night: reserve one day at a time in Emilia and the Apennines

Flat water below, bare ridge above

Emilia is two countries stacked. Below is the plain: dead flat, drained, cut by canals, ending in brackish valleys where the water is neither river nor sea and the eels come through it. The cities sit on the old road across it, and Bologna roofed thirty eight kilometres of its own streets so that people could walk them in rain. Above the plain the Apennines start abruptly, and the ridge is bare, poor and mostly empty, with drove roads still legible where flocks moved twice a year. At Brisighella a white gypsum spur pushes out of the hills, riddled with caves, and three hills in a row each hold something. The cheese and vinegar rooms sit in the strip between the two, close enough to reach either one before breakfast.

What a day had to prove here

Every day on this site had to show that it runs on its own calendar rather than ours, and Emilia makes that easy to test. Curd is cut when the milk is ready, which is why the cheese room is a four o'clock day and not a ten o'clock one. Barrels in the attic are opened when somebody is topping them up, not when a party arrives at the door. The flock comes down when the grass on the ridge is finished, which is one week in the autumn and no other week. The candidates we dropped were the ones that could be run on any date at any hour: they had already been rearranged around visitors, and you can hear it inside ten minutes.

Where the long walking day goes

The drove road day is private only, runs 06:30 to 18:00 and takes the day either side of it, so it decides the shape of a week rather than fitting into one. Put it first while legs are fresh, or put it last and fly home a day later than feels necessary. The four o'clock cheese room pairs well with the mason walk under the porticoes: one ends at 09:30, the other begins at 09:30, and the second asks nothing of you except walking on the level. The gypsum ridge needs eight and is the day most likely to move. Each figure holds that day and the movement inside it; beds, meals away from the day and the road between towns are quoted beside it, never folded in.

What people ask before picking here

The walking day is private only. What does that mean for the price?

It is from $204 per person, and the cost is flexibility as much as money. Private only means the people running it will not put strangers together on a drove road for eleven and a half hours, so the day goes out for your party or it does not go at all. Small parties pay the same rate each. One person walking alone is quoted separately, because it is the same day for the flock.

Can you promise we will see the flock actually coming down?

No, and nobody honest will. The descent happens when the grass gives out and the weather allows, a window of roughly ten days that nobody fixes in advance. If your dates fall outside it you get the drove road, the huts and the stock still on high pasture, which is a good day and a different one. The office will tell you which it is likely to be before you commit to anything.

Do I need Italian for the four o'clock day?

It helps and it is not required. The dairy runs on a working shift and the man cutting curd is not there to narrate. A translator comes on the two days where the talking carries the day, the vinegar attic and the mason walk, and nobody stops work to explain on the others. If you want commentary at every step, say so and you will be told which of the six give it.