32° Rally del Casentino

My parents have retired to the house in Italy that they bought when I was a child. A car rally — the “Rally del Casentino” — takes place every year and the cars drive through the village where they live.

I’ve never happened to be there at the time when the rally takes place, but this year we were lucky enough to be there.

The cars drove through the village twice, once during the day and once at night. We watched the day-time race from the play-park which provided a good view, and the circolo gave the kids an ice-cream each.

For the night-time race, we decided to go down to Talla, although it meant not getting home till after midnight when the roads were reopened.

We found a rather good place to watch it on the pavement near the bridge, where the cars had to take a hard turn. Most of them managed, but one of them turned to the wrong side and nearly crashed into us — it was less than a metre from Charlotte when it stopped. Some other spectator recorded it for posterity:

On our way back up the mountain, we passed three rally cars that had crashed — rather interesting that professional drivers have so much trouble with a road that I’ve driven up and down so many times!