'Va', va'!' Valissi Corinto shouts. It is unclear whether the order is addressed to his dogs or to us as we splash through a bath of mud recently vacated by wild boars. Presumably us: the dogs are in little need of encouragement. We, on the other hand, lag behind, grumbling as we become snared in branches and slip down banks of earth.
Valissi is a tartufaio, and for the past 37 years he and his dogs have been snuffling through the forests of the Apennine mountains of the Emilia-Romagna, in north-east Italy, searching for the much-prized subterranean golf balls of fungus known as truffles. It is a mysterious art and one he spent 30 years learning before taking up the job full-time. Our group had hoped to gain a little insight into his work, but he has the mischievous gleam in his eye of a man who knows a secret or two and isn't telling.
Not that he has put his faith solely in nature - a few years back, he planted his own saplings of chestnut and oak impregnated with truffle spores. In another decade, they should produce a regular crop of truffles, and one he'll be able to harvest with ease. But the location is a secret. As is the way he trains his dogs - his seven-year-old bitch Juve (short, of course, for Juventus) and her two offspring Cip and Ciop (pronounced 'chip' and 'chop' and apparently the Italian names of Disney's cartoon chipmunks).
Pigs, though better suited to this line of work (and easier for an unfit observer to keep track of), are apparently harder to train. Worse still, they are only enthusiastic about truffle hunting because they are even more enthusiastic about truffle eating. A tartufaio runs the risk of seeing his treasured fungus devoured before he can lay claim to it.
Valissi's excitement as Juve starts to dig makes sense given the small fortune he earns for every truffle. The white variety found among tree roots here are particularly prized by gourmets for their taste and pungency. But it is a false alarm. Soon, after more fruitless searching, Valissi admits defeat. This is a bad wood for truffles, he says, and he knows a better spot nearby. Tired and messy, we're starting to cotton on. Knowledge is money, and Valissi wants to keep us as much in the dark as possible.
In the next wood (lots of truffles but small and of poor quality, Valissi warns), Juve snouts around for a few minutes before digging frantically. Valissi pulls her back, using his vanghetto (truffling stick) to ease out the fungus ball from between the roots. Even before he has a chance to pass it to us, an offensive, slightly putrid, smell has filled the air. Maybe, I can't help feeling, it was better left buried.
Valissi is one of a vanishing breed of woodlander. The populations of the local villages have been slowly dying out, as the old forest arts have become redundant and youngsters have been attracted to nearby cities such as Bologna and Modena. In the past few decades the village of Pianaccio has dwindled from more than 800 inhabitants to barely 30, a figure only topped up during the skiing season. The region is trying to reverse the trend by reviving some of the area's traditional industries and lifestyles. In this spirit, the mountains were declared a national park in the late Eighties. It all sounds a little worthy, but for visitors attracted here by the opportunities for walks in the mountain forests it means an unexpected bonus - the chance to be transported into the world of a Thomas Hardy novel, where foraging, scavenging and hunting are the essentials of life. It's a high-altitude slice of Wessex.
As we walked the well-signed mountain paths, along carpets of ochre leaves and rotting chestnut cases, we regularly stumbled across crumbling casones. Once these rustic stone cottages were the key to the local economy - either as drying rooms for chestnuts, furnaces for making charcoal or as storerooms for woodland implements. There is now a drive to restore them and educate locals and visitors alike about the skills of this traditional culture.
At the Hotel Everest in La Ca we were offered a meal of several courses, all of them made from chestnut. If it sounds a little repetitive, think again. Presumably, before the advent of supermarkets, necessity was the mother - and grandmother - of invention: we had delicious chestnut polenta, ciacci (crepe), a sweet soup and frittelle (doughy flat bread). Add a dollop of ricotta or the local stracchino cheese, and it's a tasty feast.
Surprisingly, considering that it borders Tuscany, this region of the Apennines is little known to British visitors. In fact, it's not well-known to Italians either, unless they come for the skiing. But that's to miss out on pleasures the region has to offer at other times of the year, particularly its woodland trails. The network of paths, both high and low level, connect one village to the next, and mean it's easy to explore a new area each day. The hotel owners even lightened the load for us, in a reciprocal arrangement that ensured our bags were transported to the next destination.
In the autumn, the mountains are ablaze with colour as the oaks, chestnuts, birches and beeches begin to turn. At the top of the 5,000ft Monte Grande, we briefly surfaced from among the foliage to get a dizzying view of the surrounding countryside. But most of the time we were in winding, chaotic corridors of bark and leaves. When mist closed in, the darkening canopy overhead added a frisson of fairytale menace to the proceedings.
The more so because here be wolves. Seven, in fact. The pack roams the mountains but park wardens reassured us that they posed no danger. There are plenty of other non-humans sharing the woods. It is quite possible, if you tread lightly, to see red squirrels, deer, wild boars and muflones (a sort of cross between a goat and ibex).
I definitely saw the first two, and bored everyone with a disputed boar sighting too ('There was a black shape that moved very fast into the undergrowth. No, I didn't actually get a proper view but'). Equally hard to spot were the porcine mushrooms the woods are famous for. Irritatingly, most are well camouflaged to inexperienced eyes. As with truffles, it helps if you have a guide to show you where to look. But at least the most visible are also the most spectacular, like the huge tamburo (drum) mushroom.
Walking among all this flora and fauna gave us a hearty appetite. Fortunately, in the autumn, there is no shortage of local ingredients to go in the cooking pot - whether it be truffles, mushrooms, mirtillo (blueberries), endless varieties of cheese, chestnuts, boar, deer or trout. In Lizzano, the hub of the network of mountain villages, we arrived in time for the annual festa d'autunno, a cosy affair that revolves around a handful of stalls selling the many varieties of woodland booty. Restaurants and hotels host huge banquets. At the Tibidi Ristorante we started picking over the long menu before realising we were supposed to eat all 17 courses, most with liberal shavings of truffles. It was a fitting celebration of nature's bounty.
Getting there
Jonathan Cook travelled to Italy with Inntravel (01653 629010). A week's walking in the Apennines costs from £530 per person in a shared double room including seven nights' dinner, bed and breakfast and four picnic lunches, return BA flights from Heathrow to Bologna, and rail and private transfers, luggage transferred on from one hotel to another, walking maps and notes.
Inntravel also has 10-night autumn walking holidays which include a guided activity on alternate days such as hunting for mushrooms and truffles, a visit to a woodcarving studio and a cheese producer and cookery lessons. The price for autumn 2001 should be around £750.
