Observe, play, learn

A family holiday in Trentino in the Val di Fiemme mountains offers fantastic surprises. If you are looking for an active holiday with children and you don’t hold back when it comes to playing, if you want to spend your family holiday and have fun, you rather don’t miss the Path of the absent-minded shepherd!

It is an easy walk for children with games waiting to be discovered. The path is a loop circuit with no need for a guide. The walk is suitable for families and children. We recommend to bring along a baby carrier for small children (0-2 years).

Arriving in Gardonè by cable car, there are three ways of discovering the path of the absent-minded shepherd:

• an easy walk with the children, play with them, solve riddles, find clues that help discover the objects Martìn forgot, learn about the world of bees, the secrets of water and the Latemar springs guided by the gamebooks that you find at the Info Point Gardonè;
• the travelling-itinerant shows along the path: see the programme here on Tuesday we will look for the Dahù, a strange little animal with two short legs and two long legs
• walk along the path, train your sight, discover the forgotten objects of Martìn and the world of bees with the children.

Discover the local mountain know-how

On the path of the absent-minded shepherd, you discover the once very common mountain know-how: many families had at least one cow, mowed the lawn and carried the timber down to the valley. These activities still continue in Val di Fiemme today but with modern tools and only a few people carrying them on.

It is the cycle of nature: from the tree to the table, from milk to cheese, from herbs to natural remedies to feel good, from bees to honey. Along the path, discover the tools of the trade: the fork, the rake, the “gerla”, the bucket and the stool, the manger, the backpack, the boots, the milk cans, the sickle, the hat, the “cosae” (a wooden container for the stone to sharpen the scythe), the “crachesa” (a support with shoulder straps to carry wood or milk cans).

Once, children took the cows to pasture, collected the hay and spent the summer in the mountain pastures. Someone, after school, still does it. At the beginning of the season there was the “montega”, the animals going to pasture, and in autumn the “desmontega”, the return to the valley before winter. The right person to tell what life was about on the Latemar 50 years ago in Val di Fiemme, is Albina. 

Learn sweetness from the bees

Along the path you will find a signpost with a detour: it will lead you to our experimental apiary. There are different types of hives: the one with a solid wooden base and walls made of durum wheat straw. Inside it is covered with mature excrements and wax to be safe and cozy.

The traditional hive, has been completely dismantled, cleaned, reconstructed and painted. Then there is the one obtained from a large empty tree trunk, with a solid roof, covered by larch tree slates. Then the oval shaped hive, made by local artisans who followed Rudolf Stenier’s principles.

Stenier believed that bees love soft and round shapes and it was man for his convenience who built rectangular structures. There is the “Kenya top bar” hive and the didactic one. All around, meadows full of flowers: rhododendrons, arnica, raspberries and calendula.

The hives are not positioned in a single file, but in a way that the orientation of the flight allows the bees to enter and exit without hindrance. To observe them, there is a powerful telescope on the path: you can take your time to study their movements as they will continue to look for the most beautiful flowers.