A holiday inside a book, like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn

How many times, reading a good book, have we wished to be in the romantic places described by the author and to take part in the characters' adventures... To love a book also means identifying with a protagonist and imagining his life as if it were our own. If going on holiday inside a book once seemed an impossible dream, now it no longer is: the lively kids of today and yesterday, as well as their mothers, sisters and friends, can spend a weekend, or even a longer holiday, in a place that will remind them of the adventurous setting of Mark Twain's famous novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Exactly as I did last summer together with two of my friends and the children of one of them.

And to do so, there's no need to go all the way to the Mississippi: an hour's drive from Milan or Turin, and about half an hour from Genoa, is enough. This storybook place is in Lerma, in the province of Alessandria, 6.7 km from the Ovada exit of the A26 motorway between Milan and Ventimiglia.

If the boys in Mark Twain's novels spent their days playing and hatching hare-brained plans on the riverbank, the youngsters who holiday at the Mulino di Lerma can do the same on the stream, while the parents take the sun comfortably on the beach. The Mill stands on the Piota stream, in an open valley, in the woods of the medieval Spinola Castle. Beneath a rocky outcrop, the stream forms a wide, swimmable lake of crystal-clear water where you can bathe and sunbathe on the beach. The water comes down from the uninhabited mountains of the Ligurian hinterland and is untouched by pollution from settlements. For guests of the eight bedrooms, the property provides a parasol and deckchair for the beach.

The 70-80 metre rock face, dropping sheer over the water, and the age-old forest are unusual, as are the silence, the green meadows and the chance to swim and walk along the stream towards the mountains.

The woods that Tom and Huck crossed in search of hidden treasure, in an America peopled by cowboys and Indians, are not so very different from those where grown-ups and children can venture out on walks from the Mill towards the Capanne di Marcarolo Nature Park, on foot, by bike, or even on horseback, in true Western style.

After the adventures, the Mulino di Lerma offers everyone a regenerating rest built around good food and the genuine flavours of traditional cooking: the animals — ducks, hens, horses — are a joy for the children, and the restaurant makes everything in house, from bread to desserts, to guarantee the finest quality, safety and digestibility. In the kitchen only eggs from the farm's own hens are used.

The menu is always changing, and among the local specialities worth noting are the vegetable ravioli, along with some old dishes, in particular a medieval pre-Columbian white sauce made with meats, aromatic herbs and olives.

The Mulino di Lerma is also an educational farm: a small dam channels the water to a turbine that makes the property self-sufficient in electricity thanks to hydroelectric power. Guided educational visits to the plant are organised for students, schools and groups.

Not only did we have great fun and rest in this romantic, adventurous setting, but learning had its part too: all the little and grown-up Tom Sawyers and Huck Finns of today who come to spend some time in this lovely place are offered a free electronic copy (e-book in PDF format) of Mark Twain's two novels in the original language: so on returning from our holiday we could give in to storybook nostalgia while also brushing up our English.