12th May 2016 Viterbo to Vetralla
Overcast with sunny spells but no rain
(Hallelujah, have just discovered how to make the photos more visible so have adjusted Viterbo and will start going back to adjust previous ones as time allows.)
Exactly 20 km – should have been 17 but 1 km lost in Viterbo and then I got lost again…
Fine weather when rain had been forecast! Quite some cloud around but very agreeable for walking.
Sally forth in spring
Stepping spritely
Scaling hills
Scanning scenery
Seeking self in simple pleasures
This is the inspired verse I received from my wonderful versifying friend and I set out this morning with her words singing in my ears.
Today was a good walking day all through countryside on little roads or paths, but I got lost twice!
The lovely Matteo came to get me breakfast which was good: fruit, yoghurt, bread with cheese and ham, tea.
I set off convinced I knew how to get to the cathedral as I’d been there a couple of times and had packed the good map away, so of course I took a wrong turn…these old cities need to be respected as there are no straight streets.
I finally asked a man the way as no bars were open in the little streets I was in, and he said he was going there. I looked again and he was a priest who’d been out to buy bread and he walked me to the cathedral and I was on the right path again. I had seen no bars open and knowing that I’d be straight on to little roads for 17km once I walked through the old city walls, I had no other option than to go into MacDonalds (any port in a storm) right next to my path. And a good cappuch it was too.
It was a day through countryside and small roads along, up and down, playing hide-and-seek with the motorway, over and under it several times, through a countryside of crops, green and yellow, olive groves. Lovely views at times.
Also some well-tended vegetable gardens, beautiful wild flowers, and of course the eternal barking of several dogs at EVERY property passed. Of course, I could look at it positively and say they were giving me a welcome, even with wild eyes and teeth bared, as they always ran the length of their garden all the time barking, accompanying me…and I am beginning to believe that small dogs are the worst.
Not far out of Viterbo there was a wayside shrine to Saints Illario and Valentino of the site of their martyrdom – probably a priest and a deacon who were killed around the end of the 3rd century during a period of persecution by the Roman emperor Diocletian.
At one point I was on the little path through a field signalled as the “Itinerary of Faith” -Etruscan, Roman and Christian, marked with the “Stations of the Cross” type glass picture frames, all through grass, and there was an Etruscan tomb but it was locked and couldn’t be seen.
It was a day of encounters:
– first the kind priest who helped me find my way out of the city
– I was stopped on a dirt road advancing the fold in the map in my transparent map pocket when a hiker of a “certain age” (probably my age) going in the other direction with a staff and a backpack said to me in broken English, “the signs are marked”, and then “I’m going to home” & he was away again before I could ask him anything. This was the biggest regret of the day. Where had he come from at 10 in the morning going the other way?
– I came across a disgusting small mountain of broken and worn out furniture, appliances, etc, dumped next to the road and then a man appeared. I lamented on this and he could only agree but it seemed that behind the fence there had been a rubbish dump which was since closed. I asked him if he lived nearby, “yes”, and was he taking a walk, “un giro”, and he said “una giretta”, just a small stroll. Shame he had to walk by such a mess.
– Sometime later a slowly-moving 4 wheel drive came down a very quiet small road, in the middle of nowhere, and it was the “polizia provinciale”, so perhaps they have to prove that they’ve been doing the rounds (pity they couldn’t find those who were dumping the garbage).
– an Italian walker of about 40 passed me (he must have started off late also). He was walking in socks & pliable sandals & his hiking boots were attached to his backpack. Some time later I met him again seated at a (very rare) picnic table on the path through fields and olive groves (only for VF walkers?) so I sat down to also eat & drink something. This was Enrico who looks after an Italian mountain refuge, open all year round, close to the Simplon Pass, just near the border with Switzerland. He then decided to find accommodation for the night so when he rang a hotel listed in my guide to ask the price I asked him to book for me, which he kindly did. He then continued to ring the hostels each time asking the price and whether cooking facilities were available. Anyway I left him and walked on but asked as I left why the sandals & he explained that he had slipped and hurt his foot so couldn’t wear the boots.
So I got back on the track and arrived in a zone where the guide recommends extreme care as the waysigns disappear completely in an area which is down into a hollow through a “complicated area” with turns everywhere…so on I walked but I didn’t see some of the structures and other things described in the guide although when I finally saw a house on my left I walked in front of it & kept on (as directed by the guide). However the path went through fields and got worse and worse and after 500 metres I had to return to the house & try again but still no good. I was lamenting being lost in the middle of (really!) nowhere with empty farm houses and buildings around. I returned to the junction of the road and then, Hallelujah, who did I see coming along but Enrico!! I couldn’t believe my luck and felt I was blessed as he must have sat for quite a while…and words from a song in The Sound of Music came to me “so somewhere in my youth and childhood I must have done something good…”
He was using his iPhone application Sloways & guided me as I wasn’t quite where I thought I was…but as I had read and reread the instructions so much I was able to tell him what was coming up – he laughed and said I sounded like a young child learning by rote! When one is lost one studies and interprets each word…over and over again.
It seemed that he had walked to Compostella to give up smoking which he did 8 years ago, but since then he had gained 10kg in weight so this time around is walking from Lucca to Rome without eating bread, pasta, potatoes etc. He loves fish (well you would, wouldn’t you, if you lived at a mountain refuge where all the food has to be brought in & is mostly non-perishable) and he buys it frozen from the supermarket and cooks it up each night. He may have been suffering as a km after we met up again, close to Vetralla, he spied a seat and said he would sit on it for a while. Didn’t see him again after that.
As I walked towards the hotel, I started to have some twinges and pain in my problematic knee…not a good sign with 4 days walking left towards Rome. So what to do, take some of the anti-inflammatories I have, stop walking for a day, take a bus? Will sleep on it and see tomorrow.
Into Vetralla to the hotel Enrico had reserved for me.
When I turned up at the albergo the proprietor (I assume) gave me a little map and marked where their restaurant was. I walked into the old part of the town, a poor looking place and quite sinister and unwelcoming, especially with a cold wind blowing. No flowers along the streets here, and when I asked someone about a restaurant it seems that this is the only one near here. I went into the church which was in an unattractive Baroque style but there were about 15 children preparing for their first communion this weekend. I asked the priest when, and he said perhaps Saturday, perhaps Sunday, lots of things to arrange…
I spent an hour or two in a bar which was not nice at all (but I found an unlocked wifi connection!) – very basic, the music was blaring, the slots machines were played by almost everyone who came in, even some little old ladies, and then a young man came in and emptied out all the money from the slot machines! All the locals (not a very pre-possessing lot) seemed to come in but there was not at all the ambience one expects in bars, with each one just trying to find a seat along the wall in order to pass time. I had a pot of tea with the least-worst type of industrial biscuit as I’d not eaten lunch…but the proprietor did refill the teapot for me.
Then I went to the restaurant which was closed for the weekly closing day! However a door was open to the adjoining bar, even though in darkness, and I explained I was from the hotel and was allowed in, thanks be to God. There I met the grandmother Bernadetta (82, and the husband at home is 85), the daughter Ornelia who runs the restaurant now and the granddaughter Valentina. So Ornelia didn’t have her evening off.
Francesco, the grandson from the hotel, has gone to Rome for the evening to see a tennis match with Djokovic playing. They seem to do “slow food” here and I had a good toast with porcini mushrooms followed by some excellent pasta which was made from stone-ground wheat, and a mixed salad. The restaurant has been in the family for over 50 years and I heard the whole story of the family…not easy, but these people face what comes to them.
I have since spoken to my Australian rheumatologist in Geneva who recommends resting for a day if possible…so, will see tomorrow.
High point of the day was the perfume when I walked along narrow roads lined with Broom on each side. It was wonderful.
Biggest regret of the day – not asking the older walker going in the opposite direction for his story…