Ravioli, hang gliders and canals

Norma is an ancient Roman town that pre-dates Rome itself – by at least four hundred years. It is perched atop an escarpment that rises spontaneously from the Latina plain that was, pre-Mussolini, swamp land. Mussolini enticed unemployed workers from the Veneto region to move to Latina where he had them build canals across the swamplands to drain them and in the process created a large area that was later to become the home of manufacturing industries and agricultural land that produces rich harvests of vegetables, grapes, olives and kiwi fruit. Today the factories lay abandoned but the primary produce is thriving.

The sheer vertical cliffs of the escarpment make an ideal launching pad for hang gliders who ride the thermals on a clear day, creating a vista of colour, action and serenity for those crouched on the cliff edge basking in the autumn sun or, like Cinzia and me, sitting down to lunch at Ristorante la Piccola Fontana.

We had made it to Norma on our second attempt. The first ended in Bassiano, another old (medieval) village constructed with wall fortifications on the next hilltop. We had taken the “indirect” route via the road to Cisterna and Latina but when we got to the turn off to Norma the road was barricaded due to a rock fall that had occurred because of the month-long rain. So on the second attempt we took the direct route from Cori. We had avoided this route previously because of the very narrow and winding roads to, in and out of Cori.

Remember that Cori predates Egyptian civilization (well almost!) having been established by the Greeks about a thousand years before Romulus and Remus were conceived and certainly prior to anyone planning for motorised vehicles! In fact Cori was constructed before anyone dreamed of inventing the chariot! So the roads are not particularly wide and in fact the road from Cori to Norma doesn’t show any evidence of being maintained since its construction! It is not unusual for some country roads in the Latina region to have vehicle disabling pot holes but on the Norma road even the pot holes have potholes! Many a Smart car has been completely consumed in some of them. Maximum speed is thirty Kph and you go the thirty kilometres in second and third gear. Imagine the difficulty in manoeuvring to allow cars coming in the opposite direction to pass on what is fundamentally a single carriageway while trying to avoid car consuming holes in the ground and a sheer four hundred metre high embankment on one side.

[ NOTE: I need to take this opportunity to announce publicly that the Lariano to Giulianello road has been completely re-sheeted – yes, TUTTO! For the past five years driving to nearby Lariano has been a dodgem course. The boys bring the truck around the day following a decent rain and they repair the damage from the day before. The road was basically a five kilometre stretch of tiny mounds about forty centimetres wide that made the car rattle and forced the early replacement of tyres. I had to do it twice this year. It is such a pleasure to drive on beautiful, fresh, smooth-as-a-bambino’s-bum asphalt that most of the locals do the trip just for the sheer enjoyment of the drive]. Back to today’s story….

This day was to turn into a very memorable one, not just due to the challenging journey, the outlook and the history, but because of the meal. You know what it is like when you have something to eat that is exceptionally tasteful? You remember everything about the place, a picture etched in the mind that lasts a lifetime. It caught us completely with our pants down. We had spotted out the three or four trattoria in the village, looking for the one with the best menu selection and nicest ambiance and we literally stumbled into la Piccola hunting for a menu which the proprietors had forgotten to stick up at the entrata. We found ourselves an arm’s distance from a plate glass window with the breathtaking view of an abrupt disappearance of land and a huge panorama of green pastures criss-crossed by canals way below us, stretching all the way to the Mediterranean in the distance.

A very amiable gentleman greeted us and asked very nicely whether we wanted to take a seat at one of the tables and whether we could stay long enough to enable the chef to awake, have a shower and stoke up the wood fire in preparation for lunch which they were planning in an hour or so’s time. We thought we would and ordered an acqua minerale alla frizzante e mezzo litre di vino di casa rosso.

He brought the drinks and home baked pane and we settled down to relax in the idyllic surroundings when first one, then a second, a third and a fourth hang glider launched off the cliff top next door. In all seven aerialists graced the clear blue sky before us and they rode the thermal to a height of about a kilometre and gracefully descended, repeating the exercise before going their separate ways – an aeronautical display lasting an hour and a half. Just when I was grandstanding for Cinzia with my knowledge of thermals the erstwhile waiter-cum-proprietor turned out to have a private pilot’s licence and he filled in the gaps of my narrative. Meanwhile the chef had surfaced, got himself and the cucina in operating nick and prepared our primo pasta (hers ravioli with cheese and walnuts in a pomedoro sauce and his a pumpkin and liquorice ravioli with a cream sauce). The servings were rather small (you could count the ravioli without a calculator) but that was a very good thing because the taste was such that we savoured our meals piece by piece.

Everything was made in situ. The ravioli shells, the fillings, the sauces – everything made in the chef’s hands right there in the cucina and it tasted divine – the sort of taste that you would dial into your GPS with a shortcut named “take me back to Heaven”. Unlike our experiences in Oz the settling up at the cassa didn’t turn out to be too horrific. Thirty nine euros for the two unforgettable primi, a selection of five cheeses with hot chips, a large bottle of frizzante, half a litre of a local, light but drinkable red wine and a (real) caffe. I am not sure that it’s worth a twenty-four hour hike across the Indian Ocean but we considered it reasonable value for a very slow and tortuous dash along the pot-holed escarpment.