Eremo di Poggio Conte Hike

This morning we woke up to some overcast skies, but by the time we got to where we were going it had turned into a pretty nice day! Our hike was up to the Hermitage of Poggio Conte. I had found this on a list of hikes to do in Tuscany and if you didn’t know it was there you would never know. There were no signs, we parked at the end of a dirt road and walked along the road until we got to a big open meadow (usually there are cows in there, but we saw the cows were in a different meadow today). It’s not until you get through the farmland that there is a sign for where we were going. But the walk through the meadow was gorgeous! It borders a river and it is hard to see in the photos, but it was covered in flowers - red (poppies), white, yellow and purple flowers. Towards the end of the field near the forested area there were giant milk thistles! Their leaves were pretty, and we even found a tiny grasshopper on one!

After the meadow it was a short walk up to the Hermitage and that area was gorgeous! There was a pretty cool waterfall in the natural Amphitheatre and then some stairs up to the caves which were really nice inside. It was hard to see as it is dark and our phone lights didn’t help much, but it was really interesting. We sat and had a break down by waterfall (there were benches there) and I was talking to Raymond in my normal voice and it was echoing so much and so loudly! I had to whisper to not have it echo! Crazy! It was really peaceful and I loved it up there.

On the way back to the car we saw a weird snake! This isn’t my photo, but one I found that looks like the one we saw! Such a fun adventure!Read more