We had a beautiful 12 km walk today, ended feeling really good! Of course we did twice as much yesterday, and ended up feeling hammered. It’s sunny and over 80° here. We are staying in a beautiful bed-and-breakfast in this tiny town, with a very helpful host. She is young but was for a time a pro volleyball player.
I had a dream last night about midnight. In it the world was being transformed, and humans were being changed into spiritual beings. But the catch was, you had to be changed in pairs, becoming one. The fortunate people were with their dog when this happened. This may be neither here nor there but if I had taken notes I might have been able to write a book of prophecy (Revelation II?)
We were following the guidance from our various guidebook and phone maps when a guy pulled up next to us in his car and told us the road ahead was closed, that the bridge was completely out, and there was a detour which he pointed out to us. Gayden said that was an angel, and I will not argue with that.
The two restaurants in this tiny village are closed, but our host advised us to go to the bar and ask the grocery next door to fix us supper. It was fabulous!
The local people came to the plaza, it was a happening place. It’s a tiny village and everyone walked.
Poggios are big hills, and in Texas we would call them mountains. The trails constantly take us there. Physically this has been a hard trail. Trail markers are only useful in combination with the gps track from the Cicerone guidebook written by Sandy Brown. Of the many routes possible, we picked his. Yesterday was not as much up: 334 meters (1100 feet) and 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) and took us 7.5 hours. It was hot and we all ran out of water. There were no services available enroute.
There are more pilgrims on the trail now, we are meeting 10 or so daily, most are German and Austrian. We are projecting Assisi on May 15 and Rome on May 28.
Over the mountains and through the woods.We spent the afternoon recuperating in our (unheated) hotel room, one or two steps above camping. Dinner was excellent pizza and a very good bottle of Pinot Noir.
Up into cold, windy, wet mountains today. Tomorrow, more of the same. Saturday we ended in La Verna, miracle town.
Gabi and Monica (Austrian) sing-at the table, in a church, in the forest. It’s quite magical.
We are in La Verna tonight. This is a special place. It took us 10 hours of walking, two mountain ranges with a 4000 foot game total, a couple of miles in incredibly bad mud, but here we are.
I have accumulated a great number of friends here, I have lots of people to visit on my next trip to Europe.
Yesterday when I got lost, Giuseppe was in our finish town with his car. They were going home later. I had ended up on the other side of the Mountain, 25 km by road. I was very happy to see him pull up that little road in the rain.
We are staying in hotels and eating fine meals. This medieval pilgrim would have a significant chance of dying on his journey to Rome. Bandits, disease, and accidents were ever present dangers.
Giuseppe and Laura are gone now, but they were a huge part of our group. When I was a flight instructor in the Air Force in 1980, he was an Italian Air Force student pilot in my squadron. I never flew with him, but his flight instructor, came over to my flight to be my last flight commander (Connie Engel, in the first group of 10 women to be allowed into pilot training).
I didn’t take a lot of photos yesterday because of the rain and being lost an all. We spent the day in wooded mountains, peaceful and quiet with only the cuckoo’s call to break the silence. Today is a short day but lots of uphill.
We land in a village each afternoon. So far they qualify as quaint, slow, scenic; everything we want in the USA and don’t have. You can walk around here.
We came down long hill to a paved road, and there was this lineup of chairs for us. We took full advantage of them! It was a pretty hard day with lots of up-and-down and about 15 miles. Yesterday though was a lot more elevation, 3300 feet of up, and 18 miles, so I was still a little beat up from that. But at least when we started in the mornings, I feel good.
Last night at dinner we all ended up singing songs, Gayden sang “lounge” songs, two Austrian ladies sang clever sing-along songs, the Irish girls sang an Irish folk song, and our Italian friends sang Italian songs. It was absolutely a blast. We were all back together tonight at a restaurant so we’ll hear more songs. When I was arranging for a sandwich for Gayden this morning, because she didn’t stay in a hotel and there was no food in her hotel, I told the manager that she was the blonde who was sitting over there. And he said oh yes, the singer!
We did 1020 m meters (3,300 feet) of up today, and about 15 miles horizontal. It was a hard day, but not painful! The weather was great, and we were in vineyards, Olive Groves, then forests of tall pine trees.
We started across this bridge this morning, which has held together for over 500 years. it was steady up all day today.
We stopped about 1030 at a nice little place and got coffees. Then got some sandwiches to go, the only food available on this entire day. from the photos I have you think that the only thing we do is hang out at bars and restaurants.
We are all looking at our phones because we’re trying to figure out the rest of the day, which is already been very hard.
Well, I saw none of the famous buildings from the inside in Florence, but I had a great meal of pasta pescadora with Chianti.
We are two Italians (more on them later), two Texans, one Irish woman, and a guy from Illinois. Turns out, he is the one who brought this group together.
We used the Cicerone book (Sandy Brown), Cicerone GPX track, way marking, Apple Maps, and common sense. We are at our first stop,, 24 kilometers.
I went to the Andover Tesco grocery store with Simon. Many familiar products, similar pricing, except the Italian wine, which is less expensive than H-E-B. But-Simon got a handheld scanner at the door, and scanned each product as he put it in the bag.
At the self checkout, the list of purchases transferred instantly into the payment system, and we were gone in seconds. Except that we still had to have a checker verify that he was of age to buy alcohol.
I learned what a henge is in an excellent interpretative center, then walked almost 2 miles on a path to the actual stones. (We could have taken a bus). When this was built, people had been living in the Texas hill country for at least 7,000 years. However, all they left behind were stone tools and points.
Afterward we enjoyed a beer and chips at the May Fly Pub beside the Test River. I’ll be back to England in September with my sister Adele to rediscover our childhoods. I love England.
My hosts here -Simon and Ann Marie-have been fabulous. Ann Marie and I head to Italy tomorrow for the Way of Saint Francis. She is a friend from the trail in France. I hope I’m as enamored of Italy by the end of May as I am of England and France and Portugal.
Enroute to Italy I am spending time in England. Yesterday I spent several hours with my longtime friend John and his partner Angie. We walked from his place (a boat) to Kew Gardens.
Then I successfully took the train to Andover, where I met up with Ann Marie and her husband Simon. We did some walking today on a public footpath in the hills.
Then we parked at Saint Martin’s Church and walked to a point to view Highclare Castle, where Downton Abbey was filmed.
We did about 6 miles yesterday and 10 today. They drive on the left side of the road here. It’s disconcerting.
I have been messing around with my blog and found unpublished posts and a lack of widgets. I plan to post regularly on the Way of Saint Francis beginning May 1st, 2022. If you want to receive notifications about new posts, subscribe below. Note- you may already be subscribed; if so, it won’t take your email address.
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