Witchy Village

Several years ago our friend John Smart told us about a village called Triora in the Italian Alps that is famous for its witchy past. It’s apparently known as the Salem of Europe as, in the late 16th century, several women were burnt as witches after a bit of bad weather a few failed crops. It’s been on our bucket list for a while so we made our way up the (yet again) steep and windy road to a parking place at the top of a hill.

The village is proud of its witchy history and has its own small museum of witchcraft in the basement of the ethnography museum. Upstairs there’s a rather fun collection of dolls and the usual agricultural implements but downstairs the witchcraft section is mainly a few torture tableaux and occult books along with its replicas of the trial records. It’s a little dusty and they take the cobweb theme to another level but it was interesting to see how another museum presents the subject. The Boscastle Museum of Witchcraft still wins.

Around the village we found paintings with witchy themes dotted around on doors and boards propped up against walls. The countryside and views were superb but the road back down to the coast was a nightmare.There’s a massive Halloween festival here but we were a week to early and we’re not going back.

The satnav took us on a different route back to the coast and to say t was treacherous at times would be an understatement.it was pretty much single carriageway for 20km and in two sections a large part of the roadway had fallen away and we had to sneak past the orange tape with a massive drop on MY side of the van. Even Graham was worried and he’s usually pretty fearless when it comes to scary roads. It took us about an hour and a half to cover that 20kms and I almost ran out of rescue remedy.

We’re now back in France nad not quite out of the Alps but hopefully soon we will be trundling along some lovely wide flat French avenues so my blood pressure can return to normal.