THE LEMON HOUSE Winter 2010-2011 Newsletter

Best wishes for 2011 from Peter and Anne and The Lemon House!

We have just got back from a well-earned holiday in London and Rome over Christmas and New Year. In previous years, we have been open at New Year. By mid-November 2010, however, we were on track to reach for 2010 the same amount of business as in 2009, after a very busy September and October and first half of November. Since the summer, we’d also rebuilt our web site www.peteranne.it , worked a lot on guidebooks and had a busy new year to look forward to (see details below). So we felt ready for a holiday and took the chance over the holiday period to see friends in London and Rome.

Going into our fourth year, we have November-March as our quieter period, and then we’re busy from Easter to the end of October. Already for 2011 we have bookings and enquiries from early April through Easter to September. With flights from Stansted and other European cities 3-4X/week until the end of March and more frequently (and from additional airports) from April, it’s easy to come here all year round and enjoy the warm weather compared to that of northern Europe, as you can read below in our news on Climbing, mountain biking, life in Lotzorai and the Giro of .

One of the best bits of news, right at the end of 2010, though, is the photo above, taken in early December on the path from to Pedra Longa. Anne has had sore knees for a few years now, and walking downhill seemed a thing of the past. But after 6 weeks’ spinning to strengthen her legs, and using poles, she’s once again able to enjoy a walk in the winter sun. Around where we live, there aren’t many flat walks, so this is one of the best bits of news we could have had!

Mountain biking This year, Peter really caught the technical mountain biking bug. He’s never missed a chance to bike both with our guests at The Lemon House and with other Sardinian bikers. This autumn, instead of taking part in the local (technically-straightforward) MTB races, he organised rides through www.mtb- forum.it to Gorroppu, and Cala Sisine and really worked on his technique. He repeated time after time rides such as the 1000 vertical metres and 60 switchbacks of the “singletrack descent the Alps would be proud of” from Monte Olinie and the Locorbu-Surrele ride above The Lemon House, posting the photos and videos on mountain bike forums to get tips for improvement. "The 1st thread I've read on STW for ages that actually makes me want to ride!" was just one of the encouraging comments received. Peter now rides 95% of descents where in May he only rode 5% and walked 95%.

Up to now, the only mountain bike guidebook to Sardinia was the 1991 “Sole, Sale e Salita”, which has been out of print and unavailable for a long time. Peter approached Versante Sud, for whom he works on translations and articles, to propose a mountain bike guide for Sardinia. In November Peter (who’ll contribute 20 routes in Ogliastra using all our routes information as well as coordinating the work) and Davide and Amos, who’d helped Peter documenting local routes in May, started to work on a mountain bike guide for Sardinia, following Versante Sud’s guide to Lecco and Bergamo as a model. If you come and stay in the first 6 months of 2011, you’ll probably find your photos in the new guide, in return for helping test the route descriptions!

Life in Lotzorai

Sometimes tourist developments don’t make the most of local culture and life. This was certainly National Geographic’s Traveler magazine’s verdict on the Costa Smeralda in NE Sardinia :“…the coast is primarily “a playground for tourists” that isolates them from local Sardinian culture”. One of the panel of judges went further: “Second-home communities and resort development have turned this region into a caricature of itself. The entire town of Porto Cervo looks more like a shopping mall/retirement community/country club in Arizona than an authentic Sardinian village.” In Lotzorai, there are a couple of developments which bode well for development which makes the most of local culture. The young people of the town have formed the “MilleIdee Lotzorai” cultural association, whose regular Saturday meetings are attended by 40-odd people, which isn’t bad for a town with 2000 inhabitants. One recent speaker at the meetings was Sardinia’s youngest mayor, 25 year old Eugenio Lai from Escolca, who talked about rising to the challenge of replacing an administration which hadn’t been taking the town anywhere. They have organised winter evening classes on Sardinian Literature, the history of Lotzorai, popular music, history of architecture, communications science and other topics, as well as events over the Christmas period. At The Lemon House , we for the first time launched a collaboration with Chiara and Andrea of Azienda Agricola Muggianu, where our guests helped out with the olive harvest in Lotzorai, including going to see “their” hand-picked olives getting pressed and sampling the freshly-pressed oil. Finally at Lotzorai, there was excellent news from the Pizzeria/Ristorante Il Castello. Not only can you get pasta, meat and fish, and not just pizza, 3 nights a week all winter. Cristian, who makes the pizzas (here he is on the left of the photo) climbs, and so he and Peter have been climbing together mid-week.

Climbing This autumn, our Czech friends continued to bolt and free routes at Su Telargiu Oro. Lenka freed “Yes We Can”, 7c, which Patrick Raspo and Peter had bolted in July. Jan made the FFA of Sláva Inženýrům 7b+, a new route to the left of No We Can’t, and of Švarný Myslivec 7c/7c+; a new 6b+ “The Indian Princess” was added to the right of RSVP. These routes just managed to make it into the new edition of Pietra di Luna. To climb with our Czech friends you only need to know 3 words of Czech: Povol (slack), dober (take), and děkuji (thanks). “Come on” needs no translation and is the most important and frequently-used word! Jan wrote a nice article for the Czech climbing site lezec.cz. It starts, “For several years now we keep coming back to this magical place. The combination of great climbing, sea walks, new places to bolt, friends, plus food and coffee, to which we all depend for sure, takes us there all year round.” If you don’t want to translate the Czech using Google, just enjoy the photos or video of Jan’s FFA of Makak, 8a+. Over the Christmas holidays, our Czech friends bolted several new routes at the sector below Bacu Olcoe (just around the corner from Pedra Longa). More details soon, after we’ve climbed some of them.

At the end of September Peter spent a week doing multi-pitch routes, mainly near the sea on the coastline, and wrote an article for UK Climbing which was published in December. You can also see videos of these routes on The Lemon House’s YouTube channel.

In early November, Peter finished the translation from Italian to English of the new 5th edition of Pietra di Luna, the guide to sport climbing in Sardinia. It should be published in the first half of 2011. The new edition, with 120 crags and 3600 climbs, contains new crags and twice as many single-pitch routes as the previous edition.

Giro of Sardinia

The 2011 Giro of Sardinia starts at Easter (23 April) when, at The Lemon House we are usually full and may not be able to come for the start of the event when people are arriving and getting their race packs. For this reason, this year we limited our support for race entry to translating the programme and answering questions, while the race organisers, Mare e Monti, processed entries for English-speakers as well as for other participants. One of us, though, and perhaps both of us, will try to come for part of the time after Easter. As of mid-December 2010, there were about 25 English speakers signed up for the race, and the main hotel, the Horse Country at Arborea, was almost full. More details in mid-January after the 31/12/2010 entry deadline.