29 April 2012: Having read about Abruzzo and its captivating wild and spectacular terrain, we decided to throw caution to the wind along with our precious diesel (same price as in UK) to make a detour heading towards the mountains and the medieval city of L’Aquila. The mountains very soon started to impress us when their panoramic snow capped ranges came into view and we were compelled to click and snap the camera out of the van window.

The closer we came to the mountains, the more they astonished us until we entered the tunnel that took us right under the north face of the Corno Grande.

We arrived in L’Aquila and strolled towards the city. We were unprepared for what we found, mostly due to our Italian guide book being more than 3 years old. Firstly we thought the various wooden structures attached to buildings were for stopping snow from falling on passers by but when we realised that almost every building in town was supported in some way with scaffold or wooden structures, we realised that something incredibly dramatic had happened and not that long ago.

It turned out that on 6 April 2009, the epicentre of a massive earthquake struck the city causing this catastrophic damage, killing 308 people and injuring approximately 1500 and around 65,000 people were made homeless.

We came across several sections of fencing with keys attached to them with messages one of which read: “These are the keys of our houses, hanging on the barriers as our hopes”.

We walked around taking photographs and feeling awe-struck by the effect of the event and the overwhelming work still to be done to restore the place to anything close to its former state.

We left L’Aquila feeling somewhat sober and headed on our way south again, finally arriving in Puglia at the start of the ‘spur’ on Italy’s boot.
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