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If you wanted to paint a typical alpine environment, you would necessarily have to go past the splendid Walser town of Bannio Anzino, famous for its traditional militia festival (more information here), follow the Olocchia stream and stop at Alpe Soi.

The stone huts arranged in a row along the road ran up to the small church of the hamlet, built on grassy pastures, and all around a dense forest covered the mountains with a pointed profile, from which small rivers descended to the valley that made their presence for the noise of the small waterfalls that formed.

The crystal-clear water flowed incessantly even a little further on, an ideal place to park your car and set out on the road.

The steep path went up along the wood, until it reached the small clearing of Alpe Rusa, where a lovely hut was flanked by some fragrant laburnums.

A little further on, the forest began to open up, leaving room for grassy slopes where hundreds of colored gentians sprouted from the ground near Alpe Oreto.

At this point the strenuous climb could be said to be over, and in front of us all that remained was to reach the nearby Alpe Selle di Baranca, with a bucolic landscape like that seen in Heidi.

Looking south, the Alpe Selle refuge was visible, with its back to a small hill from whose top you could see the small lake Baranca, framed by the mountains, while if you turned your gaze to the north-west, the incessant work of some gentlemen stood out. busy in the restructuring of some huts, helped by a helicopter that was back and forth to transport the building material coming from the valley.

Beyond the last houses there were the remains of Villa Aprilia (or Lancia), once a wonderful home where Mr. Vincenzo Lancia (founder of the homonymous car manufacturer) used to spend the summer.

After the armistice of 1943 the area became one of the escape routes to Switzerland, and during April 1944 the villa was consumed by flames following a skirmish between fascists and partisans, who used it as a logistical base.

To round off the trip, we preferred to take a loop tour. We first followed the path beyond the huts that went towards Passo del dente to the north, after which we entered an increasingly dense forest, full of blueberry seedlings, passing through the pastures of Ancium and Alpe Curtet; from this point we skirted the Olocchia stream in a wild and uncontaminated environment, with the incessant noise of the water that was a pleasant background melody, and returned to the vicinity of Alpe Bocchetto, where we had parked the car.

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