The rain has left us a freshly washed path as the sun tempered the morning chill. We had our last breakfast with the flying Italian Ermanno, with his natural ease and his ready smile, and the ever steady towering Dutchman Philip, before we began our noisy walk through outer Roma on the Via Cassia. Two large parks quietened us as we reflected on the final stretch of a long and rewarding journey. At our last [...]
Home was a 300 bed parrochia split into 6-10 bed bunk rooms that were not actually for walkers but for young people, which we were obviously not. However, only a young German biker arrived (and later ate with us) so the two men had a room to themselves as did we. We left the 2 men sleeping and spent the morning with the birds and the river, and, as is often the case, seeing no [...]
The Bronze age village of Sutri has a very long history as you can see by my first words. The unusual caves they lived in; the amphitheatre they built; and so much more lay the foundation for this still serene and intimate town. We threaded our way up the meandering central silent street to the main Piazza. With the most beautiful fountain in it’s centre, this communal part of every village invited silence, and that’s [...]
We left the Swiss couple, the Englishman, Phillip from Holland who all began in Canterbury, England and the Canadian foursome at home, and went looking for our path. It was superb, like a huge stately forest garden we walked through it quietly as it seemed to warrant. Through fields of hazelnut trees we came to a ‘no-sign’ corner of the field uncertain where to go. Soon the Canadians arrived with a GPS that prefers roads, [...]
The big light had the sky all to itself today and painted the few whispers of cloud with those fiery colours only it can do. Along the ubiquitous gravel tracks deep down in eroded earth we trod; through gated pathways we went; up short eroded and rocky hills we strode, down loose rock roads we danced, but carefully. Along this morning’s Via Francigena we were alone, and experienced similar feelings to our first few days. [...]
It rained all night but it was only a dense fog that blurred the steep cobblestoned lanes as we walked past the hazy lit shops. Once again just a few people wandering the sloping streets with their newly washed smoothed stones. This main street continues its long slightly curved journey for over 500 metres then back down on a tarmac road and then the longest, steepest downhill gravel and dirt path we have seen so [...]
Dinner in a lantern lit street - ahhh - I’m in heaven - where no-one much seems to sit - just watching locals wander in and out of these doors in a wall. Behind them there may be a room; a courtyard - noble or tiny, leafy or not; a long hall or narrow laneway; a place for your bike; a rubble of decayed house parts; an artist’s studio; a spiral staircase; or a grand [...]
I’m at that stage where I see the finish but don’t really want it to stop. I’ve found a type of emptiness before on these trips when I wake up and there’s nowhere to go - the tracks come to an end but I want to keep going - but what for? - that is my reflective moment for now. While last nights dwelling was superb with a small exquisite dining room (closed tonight) just [...]
Putting our donation in the tin, we turned off the a/c and lights and left the nursing home. Around the corner there was coffee with some truckies and a few early motorists, and stamping of our credentials (proof of walking to Rome), before we tucked ourselves into the edge of the highway with headlight on. This was only for 1/2 km then off into the Paglia Valley. This vast open space swallowed us up and [...]
A short walk today so a sort of sleep in, the fog obscuring the nearest house. We are on the top of a high hill, so we’re in that place where we mostly and recently have seen obscured - we are hidden from the world. It is so quiet as we wake - the only sounds are ours, as Corrie heats up the milk and I open my clothesline window, now an old hand at [...]
