Valle d'Aosta and the cow

Teteun

The cow is almost a symbol of the mountain region Valle d'Aosta. Over there, in fact, cow breeding is a good business, and bovine products are particularily valuable. Cow milk, cheeses, bovine meat are very good.
In that region we tasted for the first time a particular product obtained by bovine udder: the "Teteun" [pronounced teh-TEHN, where the 'eh' sounds like the vowels in the english word "bird" or the french "beuf" or the german "Köln"].
During the past August holidays we attended a festival of that product in the little town of Gignod, "la Fëta di Teteun" and we ate it in three different recipes: plain boiled, stewed with tomato sauce and sliced thin as a cooked ham. I expected to taste something tough. Instead the meat is very tender, a little spongey, very similar to cooked ham. As it often happens with Italian traditional cooking, this kind of food was originated by the need not to waste any edible part of the animal.

Bataille des Reines

Speaking of cows, we also attended to another traditional event. The "Batailles de Reines" [the battles of the queens]. As the host of our bed and breakfast explained to us, the cows of a herd, lacking a dominant bull, naturally fight each other to establish a hierarchy, at the top of which there is the Queen. Those fight usually are symbolic and don't involve any blood. They terminate when one of the two contenders submits to the other, escaping from the push of her head.
The "Batailles de Reines" event is the fights between queens of different herds and they are organized like a knockout competition. We went to one of the preliminary where about 100 cows of different producers were divided in pairs. Three fights taking place contemporarily in a big rounded space. A lot of spectators were intensely involved. The strange thing was the language spoken by the speaker: the local dialect, which sounds like a mixture of italian and french. Obviously the show is played for the locals.
Unfortunately we couldn't attend to the final match that was going to be fought October 11th in Aosta. We were told that this annual appointment is usually a big event that is faithfully attended to by Aosta citizens.

More informations about these events on Rubbah Slippahs in Italy, here and here.

Saint Leonard

Saint Leonard

La Vieille Cloche

Here i am, back from a short (only four days!) but intense vacation in the Valle d'Aosta region.

We lodged at the wonderful Bed and Breakfast La Vieille Cloche, at Saint Leonard, a small outlying neighborhood in the municipality of Saint Rhémy en Bosses.
The Bnb offers different solutions: we chose the apartment because it also allows the use of a small kitchen although breakfast, in this case, was not included. For the four days the cost was 330€ (80 each night plus 10 for the final cleaning). Dogs allowed. The price doesn't include bed sheets nor bath towels, items that we brought with us, but they are available for rent.
At Saint Leonard, besides the Bnb, there is a bar (the cappuccino is good but the brioches are the prepacked commercial ones), a post office, a church, the small castle and some private houses. It's a little before the Gran San Bernardo tunnel, just after the fork with the road that climbs up to the pass (border with Switzerland).
At the highway junction there is also a restaurant-pizzeria, a little supermarket and a prosciutteria [ham shop] (this is the area of the famous jambon de Bosses). The little village and the surrounding country sides are very quiet and silent, despite the nearby highway.
Saint Rhemy, a little above, along the road of the pass, is a little bigger and typical, and there is the Hotel-Restaurant Suisse, listed on the SlowFood guide, where we lodged (and had dinner!) some years ago.

During this holiday we have seen some interesting things, which i will write about in the next posts. We also made a wonderful hike, short and easy enough also for Maddie, still recovering from the operation of the crossed ligament.

Refuge Larcher al Cevedale

Alpini's chapel at Malga Mare

Still on the same subject, here we go with another excursion we made just the day after the one at Lago della Vacca.
The original intention was to hike the "anello dei laghi" (="lakes ring"), that connects the starting point (Malga Mare), before reaching refuge Larcher, the lakes Careser, Nero (=Black), Lungo (=Long) and delle Marmotte (of the Marmots).

Still a little tired by the day before excursion, instead, we decided to leave the lakes for the next time and reach the refuge Larcher on the shortest, even if less spectacular, path, and then come back on the same.

Refuge Larcher

Malga Mare (strange name for a mountain farm at almost 2000 meters! ["mare"="sea"]) is reachable by car from Cogolo (TN). After some kilometers the road becomes really narrow and a driver begins to hope not to cross anybody in the opposite direction.
At a certain point, to keep driving a fee (2 euros) has to be paid to the guys of the Stelvio park, next to a parking lot. But we have not yet reached our destination: from that point there is still about 10 km to go before reaching the end of the road, where there is an hydroelectric generating station of the electric company and a parking.
Here, besides the Malga, there is also a little chapel dedicated to the Alpine soldiers and some picnic tables into the pinewood on the brook banks. Some cows are free on the fields.
The path starts with a fork: on the right it begins the path to lake Careser. We followed the other option marked #102 to refuge Larcher.

Refuge Larcher and Cevedale mountain glaciers

The best part is the beginning where the path winds in hairpin bends uphill among grassy fields, pinewoods and roaring torrents over which there are some little wooden bridges. In this part I was also able to see a deer. When arrived to the top it begins a long tract on a rocky path that goes till the destination.
At a certain point once arrived to plain "Venezia", there is another fork. The marker signs to Lago Lungo on path #146. Going straight the refuge starts to be visible while walking for a distance that looks neverending. The landscape opens on the perpetual snow of the Cevedale mountain glaciers. On the opposite ridge of the valley the Noce Bianco torrent, with its rapids can be seen. From the refuge, built right next to the cliff, a breathtaking view can be enjoyed.
The refuge, that has, besides the restaurant, also some bedrooms, can also be used as a base for several other excursions.
After a break and a sandwich with the local speck we took our way back on the same path.

• Time to go: 2:35
• Time to return: 1:52
• Round trip distance: 13.8km [8.6mi]
• Difference of level: 660m [2165feet] (794m [2604feet] uphill, 134m [440feet] downhill)
• Altitude: from 1953m [6407feet] to 2614m [8576feet]

GPS track
A: parking at Malga Mare; B: refuge Larcher; C: Pian Venezia plain; D: Lake Careser; E: Lake Nero; F: Lake Lungo; G: Lake delle Marmotte