We were ready to leave Colico just after 9:00 on Monday morning but had to wait for the landlady to arrive to collect the key.

While we waited I took Mo for a short walk – there’s a railway just across the road and just beyond it is a bike/walking path that seems to go for miles.

The landlady finally showed up and we got on the road around 10:00. We took the most direct route down to Lecco, which involved a lot of tunnels, than basically traced back the route we’d followed coming north – south and around Milano, then southeast past Piacenza, Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, Bologna, then south through the Apennines and past Firenza and on to Lago Trasimeno.

Rather than get to Perugia right at the afternoon rush hour – and as they’re doing so much roadwork – we went down the west side of the lake and home to Papiano on a less busy route.

Tuesday was mostly spent waiting for the fireplace guy to come – I did take Mo down to the village for a little walk, but didn’t do much else. The fellow never did show up, so it was a bit of an unproductive day.

Wednesday morning Colin got a response to his email about the fireplace guy – he said he’d be here today around 5:00. We spent part of the day going down to Ponte Rio, which is very near Todi – there’s a store there that has an excellent butcher so we picked up some lovely looking lamb chops for dinner.

On the way home we were diverted due to road work, and spotted a village on the hill to the west that looked interesting. We thought it might be worth a visit, but could we find it? We put what we thought was the location into the GPS and drove and drove, but realized we were off-track.

We chose to take a smaller road home and that turned into a bit of an adventure – it’s a good thing Colin’s new car has 4-wheel drive and we weren’t in a hurry. It actually would have made a pretty good mountain bike trail.

We found out that not all of the surrounding countryside is cultivated – I think the ground is too rocky. Other than the odd empty and crumbling house the inhabited farms were very few and far between.

We did eventually reach open areas and farms again.

Back in civilization we stayed around the house – it was quite nice out so I tried sitting on the terrace to read but the mosquitoes drove me back inside. The fireplace guys arrived around 6:30 – only a day plus one and a half hours late. There were two of them, and one had helped put the air conditioning system in last May so that was a bit reassuring.

Between their tiny bit of english, Colin looking words and phrases up on his phone, and a couple of sketches done they understood what was wanted. They looked up the existing inside chimney, which apparently has to be demolished, climbed up thru the skylight in my bedroom to look at the roof, and announced that they could do it.

They have to report back to Leroy Merlin, who will be arranging everything for Colin – a stainless steel pipe has to be ordered, then the work can proceed. Colin tried to impress upon them that it’s urgent as he needs to leave for England by the end of the month – hopefully they understood that part.

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