Tegolaio - Our house in Italy

27/05/2023

A lovely, lovely day spent with great friends! 💕

05/10/2022

05/10/2022

We are coming to the end of another season at Tegolaio as the nights draw in and the temperature drops to a very pleasant early to mid 20’s. This year brought a beautiful spring and a hot sunny summer that just managed to escape the temperature extremes (and forest fires)
of France Spain and Portugal and there was nearly always the cooling breeze that comes to the hills of the smaller valleys that feed into the Upper Tiber Valley.
This year our guests were drawn entirely from friends / former guests and family including new friends who we swapped homes with in Sydney and Crete. Our immediate family arrived in mid July and all 18 of us were together for one hectic, enjoyable and memorable week around family birthdays in late July. Our son and family left us only last Sunday to return to Melbourne after their extended stay.
Covid travel restrictions were forever changing over most of the season and thankfully have now totally disappeared. The whole family succumbed to the virus at least once during the year except for yours truly whose four jabs and clean-living lifestyle has so far managed to avoid infection.
Next year we are keen to see our friends again take advantage of mate’s rates, as we prefer ideally to know our guests so please let me know if you are interested in a holiday here pretty much any time next year except June,1st week in July or the first week in August.
Let’s hope for a happier world in 2023 and either way Tegolaio is a wonderful place to escape and recharge your batteries
Stay healthy and happy and we wish you all an early Buon Natale 🤗

12/07/2022

Update on Tegolaio July 2022

After these two Covid years we are pleased to say that things are pretty much back to normal at Tegolaio.
Goska and I arrived at the beginning of April and prepared the house and gardens ready for our first visitors from Crete. We took the opportunity of touring Tuscany and northern Umbria and visited Anghiari, Sansepolchro and Citerna; lovely interesting towns all steeped in history. Easter mass in Anghiari was a great experience and we discovered also that getting a table for Easter Sunday is pretty much impossible as everywhere was full to the rafters, our impromptu picnic was definitely unplanned. We then were visited by Tim and Jo Coker who dropped by after their stay at Lake Garda. A social time was had by all and we visited La Verna a beautiful Franciscan monastery in Tuscany walking up Monte Penna (1283m😌)
We said goodbye to the Cokers and having planted all the geraniums and beds for the season and checked that the watering system was up and running we returned to the UK for a few weeks in May and arrived back at the beginning of June for an extended stay till mid August.
Since then it has been sunny and we have so far managed to avoid the extreme heat of Iberia and France. Mind you next week the forecast of 40’+ is threatened. We have entertained Goska’s brother Jacek and the lovely Agnieszka who we hadn’t seen for three years and witnessed the 1000 miglia going through Umbertide.Miles and Suzie Dickson joined us then for 4 days prior to all the other Dickson’s arriving for a week’s holiday together. Lena the Dickson dog was lovely company but also made good friends with the local cat community which was a major disappointment ! Whilst the Dickson party was in full steam we escaped to Crete for a week with friends which was beautiful but had changed a bit since we were last there in 1975!
We are now back at Tegolaio and have had a quiet week as Goska tested positive and has been in isolation with Covid which we reckon she picked up on our Cretan travels.
All tests now negative and we are now preparing to welcome the whole Lloyd family who haven’t all been together since 2015. There will be 18 of us, including the 8 grandchildren, and the anticipation and excitement is almost tangible.
We hope you all have a happy and healthy summer wherever you are and look forward to welcoming you all back to our beautiful little corner of Umbria sometime soon.

14/06/2021

Buon giorno!

We hope this note from Tegolaio finds all our friends, past and future guests from Europe ,Australia,the USA and the U.K as well as the Pandemic allows and here is an update from Tegolaio now that we have been here a month.

Goska and I flew into Rome Ciampino on Sunday the 16th May our permanent residency in italy allowing us to leave the UK having both had our second vaccination jab earlier in May. We had our test the day before at a drive in service at Luton airport organised by Collinson which was efficient and were emailed our negative test results within the hour (£59 each test). Armed with numerous forms as recommended by Ryanair and the government web site we found Stansted pretty empty with no queues. We landed in Rome on time and sailed through Customs and border checks with the only form officials wanting to see being the negative test certificate.

There is no quarantine requirement or further testing needed in Italy although we brought our own tests to make sure as we didn’t want to risk bringing anything with us from the journey to San Leo Bastia.

Umbria has only a few new daily cases of the virus at the moment and life is pretty normal here. Everyone wears masks in public places and observes social distancing, all the restaurants and bars are open and although you have to eat or have your drinks outside this is not a problem here as summer has arrived and everyone is outside anyway. The supermarkets and shops are all open and everyone seems to follow the guidelines.As of a couple of days ago Umbria became a white zone and restrictions other than mask and social distancing have been lifted and those are due to be lifted here at the beginning of July . Good news for our Danish guests who arrive then for their two week break.

In San Leo you can still eat on the terrace at La Taverna looking over the valley to San Lorenzo or sip a gin and tonic at Lo Spaccio watching life go by. There aren’t many tourists around and bars and restaurants are not crowded as international travel is generally quiet and travel from the UK in particular is restricted .

Tegolaio is looking great ; all the pots are planted, the terraces jet washed and a sea of red geraniums everywhere. We are delighted with the new open plan kitchen / family area and we now have a double aspect utility room off the kitchen with the prettiest outlook in Umbria!

We would love to see our friends join us out here as originally planned but understand that it is not practical for everyone. If you do want to come I guarantee that you will find it as beautiful as ever and the people (including us!)very warm and welcoming .

Stay healthy and enjoy your summer wherever you are.

Cheers

Andrew and Goska

16/05/2021

We have arrived back at Tegolaio and all is well and the builder Federico has done a great job and Tony Camerota has watched over the process of opening up our ground floor assiduously for us. It’s still a work in progress but Goska will be working her magic and we will update again soon.
San Leo Bastia welcomed us warmly and thank you Beatrice and Stephano for the as always excellent and welcoming pizza tonight at the Taverna..