Villa Vetrichina

Patrizia lives just up the hill and opens her home for a first night welcome dinner cooked by friendly chef Francesco. Any meal can be ordered in advance, including breakfast: fresh fruit from the orchard, home baked tarts and cakes, breads and homemade jam. Francesco can give you a cookery lesson with pasta as the main event, or lead you to the best places to buy local cheese and prosciutto, wine and olive oil.

Your own kitchen is smallish but quite adequate and there’s a barbecue down by the pool area for easy suppers: stay out here to watch the stars and breathe in the scents of rosemary, lavender, pine. A stray deer, boar, fox or hare might pass through at times and you will hear owls at night.

By day you can venture out to taste local wines or wander through rolling hills, dense olive groves, cypress, beech and chestnut woods dotted with ancient medieval villages – Cetona, Radicofani, Sarteano – untamed Tuscany.