Good Outweighs the Bad on Italy Walking Trip : Though tour group and author had little in common, there was always the glorious Tuscan countryside.

The vision offered by the brochure was glorious: an 11-day ramble through the sunny, unspoiled towns of southern Tuscany with a group of 15 other like-minded people--and withoutany of the bother that hiking normally entails. My luggage would be carried by a van, leaving me free to pack little more than a camera and a tube of sun block in my light day-pack.

By day, I’d drink in the glories of “an open countryside of vines and olives intersected by deep wooded valleys” or explore old churches or provincial museums. At dinner, our group would dress up and dine out on the earthy but sublime food of the region--rendered miraculously nonfattening thanks to our mega-calorie-burning days. (Our walking time would be anywhere from two to seven hours a day, “along farm tracks, woodland and mule paths (and) dirt roads.”)

Every night, depending on where we were, I’d sleep at a “comfortable family-run hotel,” a “simple inn” or “a comfortable modern hotel.” And at the end of the trip, I’d be rewarded with a free day to view the incomparable Quattrocento art of Siena. Talk about paradise!

Well, I dreamed about this trip--one of several organized by Alternative Travel Group Ltd. of Oxford, England--for nearly a year. The stumbling block was the cost: $2,350 plus air fare (which, for me, meant flying first to London--where I spent a few days on either end of the trip--and then to Pisa, which cost almost as much as the LAX-to-London journey). Not cheap. But all accommodations and meals were included, except for museum admissions and drinks outside of meals. Ultimately, the lure was irresistible, and I sprang for the tour that left in late September last year.

Now that I’ve been there and back, I can see that, like most visions, this one was accurate in some respects and flawed in others.

My first letdown came at the Pisa airport, where we met the van that would take us southeast to Montepulciano, the first town on the trip. I had a sinking feeling when I surveyed our group: There were only six of us.

I later learned that four people had canceled at the last moment, but Alternative Travel chose to go ahead with the trip. Other trips scheduled by the company were fully booked.

Four of the people who would be my day-in-day-out companions (two British women who had trained as nurses together during World War II, and a retired American couple) were my parents’ age or older, and we proved to have little in common. The fifth was in her 40s, but her flamboyantly theatrical personality soon grated on my nerves.

After a few more days, the faces, typical remarks and wardrobe of each of these people were implanted in my thoughts, shoving aside the mental space I’d hoped to allot to the pleasures of being in an amazingly unspoiled part of a country I’d always dreamed of visiting.

I was reminded of the type of Italian Renaissance portrait in which the head of a duke or a prince looms up against a delicate landscape. Mentally, at least, the presence of my uncongenial travel mates was blotting out the view. I was miffed to learn that another southern Tuscany trip a few weeks earlier had nearly a dozen young men and women of my generation.

I’m not saying members of a walking group ought to be the same age; rather, the group needs to be diverse and well-populated. Last year I went on a similar walking trip in Derbyshire, England, with The Wayfarers (a British company that leads walks in England, Scotland and Wales). On that journey, my nine walking companions--aged thirtysomething to sixtysomething--were a varied, lively and interesting group.

The rhythm of these daylong walks is such that you find yourself gradually falling in and out of step with all the people on the trip, picking up snippets of conversation from many sources in the course of a day. During dull patches in the scenery--or moments when rocky footing or steep hills were hard to cope with--I enjoyed hearing people’s life stories and discussing politics and culture.

So the moral is, if you care about the age, sex, marital status and/or number of your walking companions, call the tour operator before booking your walk and ask about the group composition for several trips and/or departure dates.

The Tuscan countryside was every bit as glorious as the pictures in the brochure, however. Daily walks often took us through open fields with long views toward rounded hills patterned in soft shades of gray, brown, lavender and green. Massed rows of slender poplar trees with feathery foliage, or a single furled cypress dropped like an exclamation point on a distant hill, became familiar sights. When the sun beat down on our backs, gluing our backpacks to our shirts, I was glad it was October and not July. (Summer trips leave earlier in the morning and take longer rest breaks at lunchtime.)

Other walks took us through leafy glades, where the occasional sound of rifle shots made us aware that the “hunting forbidden” signs posted everywhere were blithely ignored. (Our leader assured us that hunters had been warned that our party would be walking through the area.) We scrambled up skinny dirt paths and side-stepped down precipitous “ski slope” inclines.

No Sierra Club trooper myself, I was always relieved to hear we’d be walking on a strada bianca or white road (unpaved but covered with pale gravel), since that usually meant a gentle gradient--the kind that make you swing your arms like a happy camper rather than become obsessed with the sound of your breathing and the cramp in your shin. Heavy breathing was guaranteed, however, on the tortuously steep and winding road (someone in our group called them “cardiac” hills) that typically led, via a suitably bruised and battered medieval gate, to each hill town.

The walks were led by Philip Joseph, a young Briton with extraordinarily detailed knowledge of the region, an unflappable disposition and the ability to coax us along the last few exhausting miles on the basis of sheer good humor.

We began with a free day at Montepulciano, where we drank coffee in the town square (the Piazza Grande) and contemplated the imposing architecture around us: the crenelated 15th-Century Palazzo Comunale; the early-17th-Century Cathedral, with its awkward-looking, unfinished facade, and the elephantine 16th-Century Palazzo Tarugi.

The next day we set out for Pienza, hometown of the Aeneas Piccolomini, better known as Pope Pius II. Once ensconced in the Vatican in 1458, he hired architect Bernardo Rossellino to give the little village some class. Rossellino’s handiwork included the charmingly compact Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta and the Palazzo Piccolomini, which houses (among other things) a bizarre collection of war toys.

Entranced by the early morning mist rising from the stone-walled Roman baths in Bagno Vignoni, our next stop, we pushed on to Montalcino. This small town is now known chiefly for Brunello di Montalcino, a celebrated red wine we sampled at a tasting, but it also has a small Museo Civico (municipal museum) with a smattering of Sienese paintings and terra cottas by the della Robbia workshop.

At lunch time we’d invariably round a bend to find the van and trip manager Vivienne Gonley--another engaging young Oxford University graduate--putting the finishing touches on a picnic spread of regional cheeses and breads, salads (roasted eggplant, luscious tomatoes and tuna, an herbed mixture of potatoes and yogurt, or the like), and perhaps slices of sweet melon with prosciutto. There was inexpensive wine and bottled water (a much better choice for afternoon walking), and fruit for dessert.

Vivienne also researched the restaurants where we had our evening meal and planned the menu around specialties of the region (we all ate the same thing). Every night, she’d describe what we were about to eat as we sat around the table eagerly awaiting our crostini (little pieces of toasted bread covered with mixtures of olive oil and tomato or olive paste) and bottles of pleasant, if undistinguished local wine.

The all-women kitchen in the tiny village of Buonconvento prepared perhaps the most satisfying dining experience of the trip: thick bean soup, pasta with local ham and cream, and a rich and creamy semifreddo. Elsewhere, we gobbled courses of heavenly pastas and plainly prepared meat or fish, heaps of vegetables and rich desserts. This plentiful but unfussy country cooking is even more of a treat with a walker’s boundless appetite and clear calorie conscience.

Incidentally, the brochure urges travelers to pack something nice for the evenings, but the restaurants are usually down-home neighborhood places where other patrons are casually dressed. A pair of slacks and a simple top are all you need.

(Acquaintances who have traveled on similar, but more costly, walking trips with Toronto-based Butterfield & Robinson tell me that people do dress up at night--perhaps with reason, since that company stresses the plush nature of the tour’s hotels and restaurants. On B&R; trips, there is no tour leader en route --detailed maps are distributed to walkers--and lunches and some dinners are not included.)

Opportunities for encounters with the people in the towns were few, particularly for someone who speaks no Italian. In Montepulciano, when I wandered toward a church where the wedding party waited on the lawn for the bride and groom to emerge, a smartly dressed mother smiled over her little girl’s efforts to offer a stranger a potato chip. As a group, we walked by a barn where a wine-pressing operation was in full swing. A stout elderly woman washed off an armful of bunches of small, sweet grapes for us.

Another day, we peeked at the mechanics of a grape harvest. (Leaning against a truck, the owner’s wife casually worked a piece of embroidery while bent bodies toiled among the vines.) Once we passed a man burning grasses along the side of the road--an enigmatic, Felliniesque figure squinting in the sun amid the stinging, perfumed smoke.

In addition to a few official free days or afternoons, walkers have the option to skip part of the route--although the power of silent peer pressure seems to make people feel guilty about dropping out, even temporarily.

One of the most memorable group excursions, in the hamlet of Casciano di Murlo, was to the ruined Cistercian abbey of San Galgano. The ruined abbey church has the timeless presence of Stonehenge: a tracery of standing walls carpeted with grass and roofed by the sky. A few steps away, the small church of San Galgano sul Monte Siepi has an eye-catching brown-and-cream-striped domed ceiling. Among other delights are the faint remains of “Annunciation” and other murals by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, one of Tuscany’s great 14th-Century painters.

At night, after a two-hour dinner, we were ready for bed. In any case, as in most small towns, there seemed to be little to do. Only two of the hotels had TV sets, confirming my notion of Italian television (apart from dubbed American fare) as populated solely by Vanna White look-alikes or jowly men in heavy glasses pontificating on current events. An engrossing book is essential--and also a welcome retreat from the rather bleak surroundings of some of those hotel rooms.

In Buonconvento, my high-ceilinged white cell (whose bathroom was outfitted with the exasperating but all-too-typical type of shower that consists in its entirety of spigots and a drain in the floor) was right across the narrow medieval street from people with screaming children and a blaring TV. In Montalcino, my room had a view of mountains (best if you ignored the parking lot below) and a comfortable bed and bath, but we were far enough from the town center to require bus transport.

All in all, considering the immaculately preserved landscapes and medieval townscapes we saw everyday--and the weary state of my bones--I preferred comfort to “charm.”

Incidentally, there is no cash penalty if you’re traveling solo and request a roommate but wind up without one. Some of my rooms had monkish single beds; others were more expansive doubles.

The culmination of our journey was Siena, an art lover’s paradise. It was my first visit, and I had just one day to try to cram it all in, so I limited myself to the three major venues for this form of intoxication.

I spent hours in the galleries of the Pinacoteca Nazionale, home to important pieces by all the Sienese “greats,” including Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti, Giovanni di Paolo and Duccio. Then I nipped in to savor the frescoes in the Palazzo Pubblico (the town hall), which include Simone Martini’s sublime “Maesta” (a Madonna enthroned) and the famous scenes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti illustrating what happens to the countryside under “Good and Bad Government.”

Running out of time, my head reeling with the impact of so much beauty in so little time, I visited the Cathedral, which has a dazzling facade by the 13th-Century master Giovanni Pisano and contains such must-see works as Niccolo Pisano’s marble pulpit with allegorical figures and--in the Chigi Chapel--statues of St. Jerome and Mary Magdalene by Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, the Baroque master of art-as-theater.

By night, however, I felt grumpy about my cramped, chilly hide-out on the top floor, reached only by exiting the hotel on the rooftop--in a downpour, alas--and re-entering by another door. Silly me, I had expected “a converted palazzo” to be rather grand and luxurious. True, I had been warned (in a handout sent to walkers a week before departure) that the heat in Tuscan hotels is not turned on until Nov. 1. And sure enough, even this hotel offered only skinny, skimpy pieces of cloth in place of recognizable bath towels.

So the trip proved to be somewhat different than my wild imaginings. But--once my bank account recovers--I think I’d be up to do it again. When you have only a few days and you’re on your own, there’s nothing like a well-organized walking tour to egg you on and raise your sights.

GUIDEBOOK

Seeing Italy by Foot

The toll-free number to order a catalog from the Alternative Travel Group is (800) 527-5997. The address is 1-3 George St., Oxford OX1 2AZ, England. Trips are scheduled every month except November to various destinations in Europe. Other tours in Italy include northern Tuscany (“Tuscan Trail”), “Chianti and the Casentino,” “Way to Assisi,” “Unknown Umbria,” “Paths to Urbino” and “Verona and the Dolomites.”

Butterfield & Robinson offers four Italian destinations on their walking trips (Chianti, Dolomites, Italian Lakes and Tuscany); trips leave May through October. Other walks are in France, the Austrian Alps and Poland/Czechoslovakia. Call (800) 678-1147. The address is 70 Bond St., Suite 300, Toronto, Ontario M5B 1X3, Canada.

Mountain Travel/Sobek offers 12-day hiking trips to the hill towns of Tuscany (leaving this year on Oct. 4 and 15). The groups range from 12 to 16 people, and the cost is $1,995. (For groups of 9 to 11, there is a “small group surcharge” of $400.) Other trips are in Piemonte, on the French border, and Ticino, in southern Switzerland. The address is 6420 Fairmount Ave., El Cerrito, Calif. 94530-3606, phone (800) 227-2384.

Tre Laghi Travel, which specializes in Swiss and Italian walking itineraries, offers “The Toscana” (nine days in Tuscany for $2,460, group limited to 14; leaving June 3 and Oct. 5). Other offerings include a walking tour in the Swiss/Italian lake district. The address is 1536 N.W. 23rd Ave., Portland, Ore. 97210, phone (800) 344-8890.