Oasyhotel

As I sit outside our cabin among the long grass, the view takes me further into the mountains or down into the valley below. Everything is still. Here in the Apennines, there is peace. 

Somewhere out in this landscape, there are wolves and if you focus hard enough, you might just hear them calling, even if it’s just your imagination playing tricks on you.

For over half a century, no-one came to this vast tract of pristine mountain wilderness, 1,100 metres above sea level, on the border of Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna. 

The area’s most powerful family and main employer owned it and used it as a hunting ground. They had a metal company that made bullets during the Second World War and a large holiday home up the mountain path that today leads to the hotel. The home was situated on the edge of the pathway, so the paterfamilias could shoot deer from his front porch.

After the war, the company was no more and the area became a WWF-affiliated nature reserve, most of which was off-limits to human beings. Now, there is also a hotel, the Oasy, which sits in almost 2,500 acres of the nature reserve. 

It is clear from arrival that things are a little different here. You leave your car at the gate of the reserve and get into a Land Cruiser, which takes you 25 minutes up into the mountains and to a collection of 16 lodges, dotted around the hillside overlooking a main reception building, a bar and a restaurant, which serves breakfast, lunch and dinner.

This is fortunate: the 25-minute shuttle means the idea of leaving to go out for a meal isn’t always hugely appealing and, though there is another restaurant in the reserve, it wasn’t open when we visited in April. 

The food is wholesome, Alpine almost. Fresh ricotta from the farm next door, still-warm pastries, but also the sort of standardised Western fare that we’ve come to expect from a five-star hotel. Pancakes. Eggs four ways. 

The produce is almost entirely local, some of it coming from within the grounds of the reserve itself. The Tuscan food — boar ragù, larded pork fillet, ribollita with mountain herbs — is perfect for the setting. We ate at the restaurant every night for four nights and it didn’t get boring. The wine selection is vast. The service is speedy, polite and mellow; most of the staff are local residents. 

The lodges nestle invisibly within the wooded hillside. They are made with nature in mind, somewhere between glamping and Scandinavian cabins. Everything can be dismantled at a moment’s notice, but they are comfortable and everything — WiFi included — works. 

If you want to do more than be at one with the mountain, though, you have come to the right place. Once in situ, an array of amenities — all included in your room charge — were available. The revelation, for us, even with two young children, were the electric mountain bikes. On these, you can travel for tens of kilometres around the nature reserve, through forests and out onto open pieces of upland that present you with glorious views of the hills and mountains around you.

A man-made lake contains a natural swimming pool — though this was closed when we were there because of a recent storm — and a fleet of kayaks. The lake is not big, but there’s enough space to kayak around. The hotel’s other restaurant is further down the trail from the lake. 

The other standout activity is the wildlife tour. Kind and knowledgeable hotel guides lead you through the reserve in search of wild boar, deer, birds and wolves. Those wolves are hardly ever seen and rarely heard, but we saw their tracks on our tour and at one other point during our stay. The chance to engage with the natural world in this way, even if it doesn’t result in jaw-dropping encounters, is profound, and speaks to what is so special about the hotel, which is the opportunity it gives you to become one with the environment.

Other activities, including cheese-making and children’s crafts, are available — some are included in the room rate. That rate, which on paper can seem daunting, is justifiable in a way that almost no other hotel’s rate is, because not only does it include so many extras — kayaks, electric bikes and much more — it also places you in the heart of a truly special place.

Today, claims of uniqueness are everywhere. In a world where new discoveries are hard to come by, or where everything has been done before, the appeal of the unique is obvious, but its use is rarely merited.

This is particularly true when it comes to travel. Discover the undiscovered. See what has never been seen. Stay somewhere like nowhere else. Almost always, these claims are unfounded. There is little that has not been discovered or seen. And when it comes to places to stay, so often they’re offering nothing more than expensive branding.

To be enfolded in the atmosphere of Oasyhotel and its nature reserve, though, is to feel something truly unique. Peace in the Apennines. May it last.