Llareggub's guidebook

I've often felt that Montefalcone is a cross between Hardy's Little Hintock, nestling amongst the woodlands, and Thomas's Llareggub, complete with a castle, lying below the bosom of Milk Wood. Like Little Hintock, Montefalcone is an achingly nostalgic anachronism in this rootless modern world, with its packed parish church and families who've lived here since the 16th century. Like  Llareggub in Mary Ann Sailors' closing pæan, we know Montefalcone is 'a God-built garden … [a] Heaven on earth and the chosen people of His kind fire in [its] land'.
  In an earlier post I referred to the visitor's guide book I've compiled. Yesterday Angela asked me to add three items to the guide. As her husband is financing its printing I could hardly refuse. However, the additions are making it increasingly resemble the spoof guidebook entry Thomas included in his play:

Less than five hundred souls inhabit the three quaint streets

and the few narrow by-lanes and scattered farmsteads that

constitute this small, decaying watering-place which may,

indeed, be called a 'backwater of life' without disrespect

to its natives who possess, to this day, a salty individuality

of their own. The main street, Coronation Street, consists,

for the most part, of humble, two-storied houses many of which

attempt to achieve some measure of gaiety by prinking

themselves out in crude colours and by the liberal use of

pinkwash, though there are remaining a few eighteenth-century

houses of more pretension, if, on the whole, in a sad state

of disrepair. Though there is little to attract the hillclimber,

the healthseeker, the sportsman, or the weekending motorist,

the contemplative may, if sufficiently attracted to spare

it some leisurely hours, find, in its cobbled streets and

its little fishing harbour, in its several curious customs,

and in the conversation of its local 'characters,' some of

that picturesque sense of the past so frequently lacking in

towns and villages which have kept more abreast of the times.

The River Dewi is said to abound in trout, but is much poached.

The one place of worship, with its neglected graveyard, is of

no architectural interest.

When you bear in mind that I'd unconsciously echoed Under Milk Wood in my guide's opening words - 'Montefalcone Appennino may have fewer than 500 inhabitants' - and it now contains the following item added at the Avvocato's request, I think I can rest my case:

L’Osteria Quintilia. The former tavern boasts a bar counter and glass cabinets dating back to 1907. Until the retirement of the owner, Signora Mercuri, its restaurant - part of the Slow Food movement - enjoyed a region-wide reputation. Although the tavern is no longer open for business, if she is at home Signora Mercuri is happy to show the traditional bar to visitors.

http://www.jamesrichards.eu/The_Pool_of_Narcissus/Welcome.html