Viewing of L’Oca Blu in Umbria

So here we are at L’Oca Blu a small Agritourismo business that has been closed since the pandemic and technically is still active but the owners need to sell because one has an ongoing health issue that means they can’t look after the business now. The main structure is as you see behind me in the picture below, a stone 19th farm house. It has been totally updated in the main yet they have kept much of the original features including a large stone hearth and mantlepiece in the upstairs lounge. Also a very spacious kitchen/dining room with an island hob and much working space creates an atmosphere of serene country life. A two bedroom two bathroom accompanying appartment makes this first floor feel really spacious and grand.

The ground floor has two small appartments and two further bedroom en-suite bathrooms all in very clean and sound condition, with wooden floors and plenty of feature open stonework walls. Adjacent to the larger of the appartments an as yet converted space, currently two outbuilding storage rooms would make yet another nice separate apartment when converted of 45 m2. at the other end of the building is an office which could be added to one of the separate bedroom bathrooms to create another small apartment if we decided that would be needed. Further rooms at the back of the house contain the Wood pellet/log burning heating boiler. A gas boiler for back-up. Storage for logs and cleaning materials. And a large shallow building that houses the water storage tanks, filtration system and laundry room.

The next single story structure was added a couple of decades ago and is lovely. It has a very large dining area as it was constructed as a restaurant, with a fully fitted and brand new industrail kitchen in 2016. There is a very large feezer and separate storage and dressing facility for staff at the rear, and a large customer bathroom including disabled access and wheelchair ramps throughout. Beamed wooden plank cielings make this space feel very comfy despite its size and the logburning fire with couches surrounding it give a lovely cozy country style atmosphere. We were also told that permission are already in place for a further structure of 100m2 and an attached 35m2 storage space for the property which I saw could sit nestled between the two main structures and add an impressive feel to the property as well as accomodation for another 4-6 members.

The property sits on almost 6ha half of which is arable land/meadow and the other half is forest, though not entirely mature trees. In the basin of this valley the ‘Little house on the prairie’ is an idilic space for a community and from almost every part of the estate you can hear the sound of running water in the small river crossing the grounds of L’Oca Blu. (see video below for further inspiration) On the top part of the upper meadow are many old olive trees and other fruit trees. In our opinion the setting here is ideal for sustainability and almost self sufficient off grid living if times became hard. Much of the land below the house has been used for decades as food growing space and is low on the water table so would not need such constant irrigation as with other properties. The property has no mains water, but due to the unique arrangement of water collection from the river, and combined recycling of grey water though a kind of S.U.D.S system for feeding the plants and gardens, we feel sure that running out of water would be rare indeed.

Alongside the possibility of building another structure in the main living area, it would also be possible to add a few log cabins across the grounds, for either activity, quite social space, or potentially guest accomodation for visitors and friends of the community. Manuela and I are going back tomorrow with Heidi to have another close look at this and one other property in the area. Only about six minutes away from a supermarket/shop In Gubbio and about a twenty minute cycle ride from the centre of Gubbio, (one of the best preserved medieval towns in Italy) this property offers a relatively flat (no hills) approach to getting about, and most access routes follow low travelled roads into town.

Please have a good look at the video and see if you also feel the calm of this space. Share-It team. x