Driving in Barga Vecchia

Visitors to Barga are often overheard expressing their surprise at the way that the local drivers managed to manoeuvre and negotiate the extremely tight curves and bends to be found on the couple of narrow streets inside Barga Vecchia where it is still possible to reach by car – it has to be said, a small car at that. Driving a modern car in a mediaeval environment demands a high degree of skill, space awareness and hand to eye coordination. The occasional scrape does happen as evidenced by some of the bright metallic finish streaks of paint to be found on the walls of some of the worst corners but apart from that accidents are very far and between so it is something of an anomaly that there has been not one but two accidents on the same small stretch of road inside Barga Vecchia over the last three months. In March the driver of a Fiat Panda lost traction negotiating a small incline and ended up crashing into the steps of a house.

[View with PicLens]

This week another fiat did precisely the same thing and ended up 20 metres further down the road this time totally destroying the car against the wall of another house. Luckily nobody was hurt in either accident but both drivers professed that their cars slid along the road surface making it impossible to avoid the impact. This part of the road has been recently resurfaced and many local residents claim that the new surface is dangerous. As local custom says there cannot be “two” without “three” anybody driving a white car in that part of Barga Vecchia should probably take  care in the comings months.