Our local village is San Polo in Chianti. It is a small, friendly place, a very real Tuscan town, not a tourist hub. La Casermetta is 3.5 km above the village of San Polo in Chianti, reached by a curvy country road shared with a small community of local people and sometimes tourists. Most properties, like ours, are hidden away amongst the cypress trees giving a sense of solitude, even though the village is quite close.
San Polo in Chianti has a supermarket, a chemist, a laundromat, a post office, a bar/tabacchi, a circolo, an edicola, a bus stop, a petrol station, a bank with ATM, a small weekly produce market, and plenty of restaurants nearby.
Ten kilometres north towards Florence is Grassina with many shops and boutiques, elegant bars and pasticcerie, and services such as dry cleaners and medical practitioners.
Ten kilometres south is Figline Valdarno which has a huge COOP supermarket and a large, popular market every Tuesday.
There are marked singletracks for mountain-bike riders through the woodlands around the property where chestnut tree-lined trails offer magic glimpses of the Florentine countryside to the north, and views across the Valdarno to the south, and proximity to challenging cross-country routes around the iconic Greve in Chianti wine region.
There are charming walks around the house along chestnut shaded tracks, one leading to a sudden, unexpected view of Brunelleschi’s dome in Florence.
Our own land abounds with interesting vegetation and fauna such as deer, wild boar, woodpeckers and porcupines. Keen-eyed locals scour the woods on weekends for herbs, asparagus, funghi porcini or chestnuts, all plentiful in these hills at different times of year, although the experts are always first to find the truffles.