The following article was published in the Easyjet in-flight magazine, in April 2011.

Grape Scots

It's nestled high in the Tuscan hills, but the little town of Barga sounds (and tastes) distinctly Glaswegian.

AT FIRST GLANCE, Barga looks like any other pretty medieval Tuscan bill town. It's got it all: the white-stone cathedral, the stunning views across green hills and an old town centre with steep, narrow lanes. But listen carefully to the voices of passers-by and you'll hear impeccable Italian, softened by an unmistakeable Scottish burr.

"It all dates back to the late 19th century," explains Vanda Bartolomei, originally from Dumfries, who now runs the ice-cream shop La Gelateria (4 Via di Mezzo) "There was a lot of emigration from Italy at that time, but this was a particular area of depression."

Barga had flourished for five centuries under Florence's rule, but the town suffered severe economic depression after Italian unification in 1861 when scores of locals emigrated to Glasgow and its surrounding area. It's estimated that, today, 60% of Barga's residents have relatives in the west of Scotland, while many of the original emigrant families have made the return journey and now live in Barga. Indeed, Vanda's husband Roberto is a returnee - he moved back in 1976.

With so much movement between the two towns it's not surprising that this corner of Tuscany has developed a distinctly Scottish flavour - literally. This year, the town's Burns Night Supper saw a haggis flown in from Glasgow (via London) that very morning so that 52 residents could enjoy a traditional feast in honour of Scotland's best-loved bard. Guests at Da Riccardo (Piazzale del Fosso) dined on cock-a-leekie soup, the fresh haggis and a dram or two of whisky. And on match days, the scent of a full Scottish breakfast wafts through the air at Bar Paologas (8 Via Marconi) as the Barga Celtic Supporters Club get together to watch their team play.

Ron Gauld moved over from Scotland with his wife Susi nine years ago. He opened the Casa Fontana B&B and has started making what he hopes will be his own contribution to Barga's gastronomic melting pot: Birra di Barga. "We're still very much at the experimental stage with the beer," he stresses. "Currently, we're using three types of malted barley for the brewing process, plus local hops and spelt, an ancient grain that has grown around this area for more than 2,000 years."

Gauld hopes to start marketing his Barga-made beer soon. "We've been granted permission to use the town's coat-of-arms on labels," he said, and we've had the occasional tasting session. It's gone down very well so far!" There's already plenty of interest in Barga beer - Roberto Bartolomei has even made a batch of beer-flavoured ice cream to sell in the shop.

The Bartolomeis were also among the first fryers at Tuscany's most curious food festival, the Sagra del Pesce e Patate. The annual fish and chip festival started more than 20 years ago with the aim of maintaining Scottish links and providing funds for the local football club. The festival now draws crowds of up to 10,000 and lasts for 17 days through July and August.

But Barga's Scottish connection is about more than food and drink. John Bellany, one of Scotland's best-known painters of the last century, made the town his home after a liver transplant in 1988. He says he was mesmerised by its "enchanting landscape", and now has a small gallery in the town.

Upon hearing Bellany's passionate description of Barga in a radio interview, Scotland's top bagpipe-maker, Hamish Moore, was inspired to book a flight and see the town for himself Following a year in Barga as craftsman-musician in residence, Moore set up a two-week summer school covering all aspects of Scottish culture, from music to dance, taught by a team of experts from Scotland. The course has run for the last three years, and residents hope Moore will be back again this summer.

But the most famous musician to wax lyrical about Barga is Paolo Nutini. The Scottish pop star's great grandparents left the town for Paisley, just outside Glasgow, where they set up a fish and chip shop. Nutini regularly visits Barga, performing every year at the Lake Angels festival in July and the annual jazz festival in August. What else would you expect from "the most Scottish town in Italy"?

Walking back to health and happiness

The following article was published in The Times, London, on August 9, 1997. The author stayed in a farmhouse very close to La Torretta.

What do I remember best? Wild flowers in a Coca-Cola bottle at a tiny shrine for the Virgin, beside a mountain path; trees hung with cherries and red geraniums in window boxes; an aching bottom from riding a mountain bike too fast down a long track newly-surfaced with small limestone boulders; the Gothic windows in the apse of the cathedral at Barga, glazed with thin sheets of coloured marble; fireflies lighting up a hillside, like Harrods at Christmas, and fields of long stemmed wheat, each one, said a cynic, waiting, for its cheque from Brussels.

We stayed between the Apuane Alps and a spur of the Apennines. "Chiantishire" is far to the south and, when English is spoken in the Garfagnana in northern Tuscany, it may well be with a Scottish accent. In the depression at the end of the last century many people emigrated to Scotland. Many have come back. The apparently Italian manager of the Villa Libano hotel in Barga, where we ate on our first night, had played rugby for Scotland under-16s.

The base is in an old farm a few kilometres from Barga. The stone outbuildings have been converted into comfortable bedrooms. No group is bigger than 14 and there are always two guides for the walking or biking. With one guide at the front and the other at the back, everyone can go at his or her own speed. Northern Tuscany can provide some rugged walking, but nothing beyond the ability of the reasonably fit and well shod. Biking can be more demanding. Particularly if the last time you cycled was a decade or three ago. But old skills reassert themselves, although mountain-bike gears, which make those on a four-wheel-drive truck seem unsophisticated, can take a morning to get used to. Muscles, unused and forgotten, can complain for days.

I prefer to walk. In early June the countryside was still full of wild flowers. Valerian grew out of dry stone walls, there were showers of dog roses in hedgerows, blood-red poppies, wild lupins, broom and, in the mountain meadows, tiny orchids and pinks. We walked up through chestnut forest, then through beech to the meadows above the tree line. Like many Italian hills, the Pania di Corfino has a cross on its highest point. We sat around it and looked out over the Serchio valley to the distant Apuane Alps.

The limestone tops of the Apuanes are almost bald. The white in many north-facing gulleys was snow, even in June, but the largest expanse of white was a marble quarry. The stone is cut into 20-ton blocks, each priced at about £20'000, and today almost all of it goes to the Middle East. Michaelangelo got the marble for his statues of David from the Apuanes, and it stands in the Galleria dell'Accademia in nearby Florence.

The Apennines, on the northeast side of the Serchio, are older, softer and more forested. Reafforestation has been going on for decades. Later in the year, guides will keep much of the walking within the tree line, but in June the sun was hot but far from unbearable. In February and March they will be leading snow-shoe walks along the high rides. On a summer day it was difficult to imagine.

I go on walking holidays determined to lose weight. Exercise puts an edge on appetite, food is good, drink plentiful, and I end up telling myself that muscle weighs more than fat, as an unconvincing explanation of weight added, not lost. We ate simply but well. A typical picnic lunch was potato bread, salami, cheese, quiche, porcetta, prosciutto, tomatoes and fruit. Dinner was usually antipasto, soup, pasta, a meat dish, salad and a pudding.

With one notable exception, the Tuscan white wines we drank were good and so were the reds. One red was memorable. We drank it on the terrace of a small restaurant in Albiano. The label on the bottle was stuck on with tape and read "Vino delle Colline di Albiano" (wine of the Albiano hill), a modest enough bush. It has a rich blackcurrant colour and had a thick, earthy taste. We sat on the terrace, with antipasto and crostini, and the old bottle went to and from the barrel from which it was filled.

The awe-inspiringly bad white wine was made almost acceptable by the setting in which it was drunk. And, to be truthful, we got through quite a lot of it. We were eating at a table outside a farmhouse. The sun had gone down, fireflies glittered and, here and there, a glow-worm switched itself on or off to announce its availability to any other interested glow-worm. Dinner was a huge, filling farm affair. The wine was thick, acrid and smelt of apples.

Every hill in Tuscany has its own town, or village, or hamlet "which, hid by beech and pine, like an eagle's nest, lies on the crest of purple Apennine", as Macaulay wrote. The town of Barga is bigger than most, partly walled and best entered through the Porta Reale, or Mancianella. From the old gate steep little streets, hardly altered in centuries, climb up to the cathedral set on a small plateau at the top. It commands not just Barga as it tumbles downhill, a jumble of red-tiled roofs, but the whole Serchio valley, and the far mountains.

The cathedral has an early 13th-century pulpit, which is a masterpiece of carving, in near-perfect condition. The 13th-century Gothic apse should be seen, as I saw it, with its great doors open, the sun going down, and shadows beginning to darken the Apuane Alps across the valley. Of all my memories, perhaps that will last the longest.

David Whitaker