Back in the Saddle

Boot, saddle, to horse, and away!

Robert Browning

We left the city very early, at 6:15, because we had a long day ahead of us, just shy of 30km, and the temperature was going to rise to at least 28 by the afternoon.

The Piazza had been busy all night, and when I got up at 4 o’clock, there were still noisy revellers in the street.

By 5 o’clock there were just small, quiet groups left and the binmen were out, picking up the rubbish from the bars and restaurants around the square.

Sunrise wasn’t until 7 o’clock, so we left when the last of the stars were still out, into a square which had yet to be cleaned for the day.

We followed three young people returning home after a night on the tiles, smoking, but showing no sign of being drunk. Excessive consumption of alcohol has rarely been one of the vices of Italian youth; when I came to live out here in 1988 as a young student I was quite taken back how culturally disgusting they found drunkenness.

We passed the shop where Stephen had bought his new shoes (which gave him a comfortable day’s walking today), and he noticed a prominent Francigena symbol in the door, an explanation perhaps of why he had been given an unexpected 10% pilgrim discount on his purchase.

It was so early that the air was still full of moths, attracted by the lights.

As the quiet streets opened up before us, we appreciated the harmonious terracotta brick façade of the church of Saint Lazzaro, a jewel of Lombard Romanesque. There were beautiful frescoes inside, and it was a shame that, this early in the morning, it was firmly shut.

The urban sprawl came abruptly to an end, at sunken rice fields long since left to the weeds, and taken over by reeds emerging from a thin stratum of water vapour.

Each blade of grass was covered with hazy pearls of moisture, the houses and small apartment buildings rising behind them as if from the earth, painted earth tones of ochre, burnt sienna, salmon pink.

I was grateful that today’s path was going to be a flat and even 82% tarmac. I was walking well, feeling no pain from my knee or head, but I felt an underlying sense of unease, and distrust both of the surface under my feet, and the contact of my right foot with the pavement. My mind rehearsed the sensation of tumbling over and over again, and Stephen was very solicitous in allowing me to set a slightly slower pace than usual, so that I could get my confidence back.

As the sun rose, our path took us out through a small park on a greenway,

around the arterial roads which on any day but Sunday would be carrying a burden of traffic into the city, but today they were quiet enough.

By the time we got into San Leonardo the churches were open, including the church after which the village was named, with its handsome façade and open door.

Reader, I am ashamed to say that the church did not tempt us as much as the open door of the bar down the road, for a peppy second coffee and freshly-baked croissant.

Although this was a small agricultural village, it felt lively enough, with a dedicated cycling pitstop area, and some beautiful roadside agricultural buildings which themselves recalled ecclesiastical architecture,

and a brand-new cycleway and pedestrian walkway.

Underfoot, we began to see what looked to our Herefordian/mid-Welsh practiced eyes as sheep poo. What on earth was it doing all along the cycle path? Around us were arable fields, and more stands of poplar. There have been so many of these — it’s an important local industry; Italy dedicates up to 50,000 hectares to growing poplar trees, mostly where we are in the Po Valley. It’s used for making plywood panels, packaging and pallets, as well as wood chips for biofuel.

But up ahead was indeed a large flock of that old breed of sheep being grazed on harvested land, long floppy ears a-flapping.  They were being separated into two flocks not by the large white Maremma sheepdogs (who were barking at us), but by human beings with a very large sheet of plastic tarpaulin which they pushed through the middle of the flock, and simply walked the sheep away from their fellows.

In amongst the sheep were some goats, wild-type beasts with impressively high, backward curving horns. The remaining sheep which had not been selected were stuck in their circular fenced-off enclosure, going round and round like goldfish in a bowl following each other.

The kilometres fell under our feet on the quiet country back roads. Apart from the tree plantations, soy became more common, and maize had taken over from the rice fields.  There were several pairs of hunters out fowling. Farmyards contained stores of hay, and here, on the edge of the Po Valley with the Ligurian Apennines beginning to rise mistily in the distance, there was the same transition into mixed farming which we had seen as we came down through the foothills of the plain in Piedmont.

It was not only the kilometres that were falling under our feet, but also the Italian regions. Having entered Italy in the Valdosta, and walked through Piedmont into Lombardy, we will soon cross into Emilia Romagna.

15th century Lombard churches were the order of the day. San Giacomo was a fine example of High Renaissance Lombard architecture, with the typical brick (we looked dubiously at the soil here around, wondering whether the bricks were local) construction embellished by a decorative frieze, and an endearingly delaminating stone door surround.  The church had been erected initially as a religious staging point on the road to Compostela, and it was a huge shame it wasn’t open since it had a renaissance fresco cycle inside which looked as though it would be something special.

A colossal farmyard had been constructed right up against the apsidal end.  Unbelievable!

We stopped in Belgoioso, seat of the palatial hunting lodge of the wealthy of Milan since the 1400s.  François I of France was imprisoned here in 1525 after losing the battle of Pavia; possibly Bel, but hardly Gioso for him.

I mentally assessed the knee while Stephen ducked into one of the many bars to recaffeinate himself (third dose of the day).  All seemed ok. The great and good of the town were coming out of church in their smart clothes and falling en famille into the Caffè Centrale to join the loungers sitting there already.

My knee had stiffened as we sat down and I was a bit concerned about carrying on — Belgioso was the bailing out point for a train back, and if I didn’t take this opportunity I would have to walk on to the end of the day. Stephen was of the opinion (being an acknowledged expert on knee injuries) that it would ease up, and although I was very skeptical, it did prove to be the case.

Looking at the variety of houses in town and in next village of Torre dei Negri helped take my mind off the knee.  I admired and was envious of the cool garden which surrounded this house,

and wondered what on earth these people were thinking when they painted their house green — the earth tones that I mentioned previously are so in keeping with the landscape hereabouts (and in Italy generally), and the screen was a particularly troubling shade. The next-door neighbours must’ve been appalled.

But perhaps not as appalled as the neighbours, both next-door and over-the-road, and passers-by and in general le tout Belgoioso at this — extraordinary — bizarre — unbridled —

Luckily, to take our mind off the monstrosity, along came a ride-out all’italiana, the usual Harley-Davidsons and other heavy duty motorbiked here supplemented with a variety of Vespas; a long procession of roaring and revving.  It was wonderful.

Puttering along behind them was a yellow deux cheveaux, which I think might have qualified to take part, rather than just being a random car on the road at the same time.

The next half hour was a sort of slog but also appreciated, an entirely flat and smooth continuation of the bike/pedestrian path which was fast and felt safe.  The same could not entirely be said of the sandy path we transitioned on to take us around the enormous sand quarry which has been partially flooded to form three large lakes.

It was softer underfoot than tarmac, obviously, but was so comprehensively uneven that I was worried about falling. Stephen (who has been intently observing, apparently) thinks I don’t lift my right foot enough, as I scuff it on the ground quite a bit when I walk. This might’ve been why I fell: if the super grip of the soles caught on something, it might might’ve taken my ankle over and then me entirely.

I don’t know. But I kept my eyes firmly on the ground and only flicked them from side to side when out of the corner of my eye I saw one of the very many dragonflies patrolling. There were lots of different types, skimmer and darter species, including a bright scarlet one that was very common.

It was lovely to be walking by the water again, even if it was quite far away.

The lakes behind us, the sandy path continued, taking a number of right angled corners and curves to follow field lines and natural streams. In the shade it was preciously cooler then out in the baking sun, and I was glad of the baseball cap which I had been gifted by the Pavia equivalent of Poundland in the underground market below Piazza della Vittoria. Feathery fronds of false acacia created dappled shade for us and as the path got increasingly sandy, it felt as though we were walking on a beach.

This false acacia has taken over here in the same way as in France. There are not as many woodlands here along the Francigena route in Italy so far, but certainly the ones in the plain have really been slowly becoming monoculture.

Another invasive plant that seems to be pushing out everything else is American pokeweed. I don’t remember ever having seen it in Italy before, and now the pernicious weed is everywhere.

The acacia wood eventually gave out onto the most beautiful section of today’s walk, at a series of locks over the river Olna and its canal. It has felt like it has been awhile since I have been in the presence of such a beautiful river, reminiscent of the Avon and the River Great Ouse which I walked along to Cambridge a few years ago. It was something about the combination of the lusciousness of the bank vegetation, the waterlily patches and the reflections of the sky.

But I had to tear myself away from this riverine idyll because, Reader, here was an Archimedes screw of my very own.

It lay behind wire mesh fencing with a ‘vietato l’accesso’ sign,  but a little homunculus-pilgrim-sized doorway had been cut into the fence and there was a Via Francigena sticker right by it, so I reckoned it was an invitation.

The screw was absolutely huge.

It was forcing the water from a high level to a low level, which seemed to me to be slightly pointless because you could simply have opened a sluice or lock.  I had thought that the purpose of the Archimedes screw was to lift water — and indeed this is the case — but apparently, operated in reverse, it can act as a small hydroelectric power plant. Perhaps this was what was going on here.

On from the locks some of the water from the Olna had been diverted to create a slow-moving canalised river for irrigation purposes.

Our path followed its banks for quite some way, and for me it was a dreamy twenty minutes or so.

Stephen’s eyes were on a tractor working a field to our right, though. It wasn’t clear whether it was harrowing or drilling the soil, but the tractor stopped right by the path and (although I can barely tell one end from the other), Stephen confidently said that it was drilling seed into the ground.

Earlier on in the ricefields we had seen a field which had been harvested, fertilised and already drilled, and was now being slowly flooded from an open sluice.  It makes us feel that we have seen the whole of the cycle closing and starting up again.

We were into the last hour now, trying to make the 1:20pm train back and thus increasing the place across a series of rice fields around three sides of which the path exceptionally annoyingly traced,

when Stephen abruptly stopped in his tracks.

‘Otter!’

And it was!  It dived pretty swiftly, but to our surprise surfaced again, and then sculled along parallel to us, seemingly completely unfazed by our presence.  Our admiring and delighted presence.

That made the day, really.

It became clear that we were going to miss our train by minutes, but there was another one an hour later, so we passed swiftly through the surprisingly unattractive village of Santa Cristina and out the other side to its station.

The station was tiny, boiling hot, and with one bench in the full sun. On the other side of the pedestrian crossing there was a lowish cement  wall in a smidgen of shade from a tree, so we repaired to that prepared for a long wait.

Fabrizio cycled past to the house opposite us, fed the squawking chickens and prepared to cycle back again. ‘Do you live there?’ I asked ‘No — an old lady of 87 lives there but she’s out having lunch with friends.’ ‘Oh — it’s only that I was going to ask whether we could sit on those seats outside the house in the shade, because it’s so hot and we’ve got a long time to wait.’

‘Sit! Sit! She wouldn’t mind,’ he said.  ‘In fact, she’d offer you a coffee. She won’t come back, but if she does, tell her Fabrizio said to make you il caffè, quello buono.’

And so we repaired to the chairs and table in the blessed shade, surrounded by the chicken scratching around in the dust at our feet, and ate our lunch.  Carol the French pilgrim turned up, en route to the next village, and together we phoned Danielo the legend of the Francigena, who you will encounter along with us in two days’ time.

In the meantime we caught the train back to Pavia, and I dozed off several times.  My knee had done brilliantly well — by the time we had got back to the flat it had been 32 km almost without complaining. I feel I have been astonishingly fortunate. We thought we would celebrate with an icecream.

Stats for the Day

Distance: 29.76km plus a walk through Pavia

Elevation: 97m

Time walking: 6hrs 1min

Average speed: 4.9kmh

Falls: 0

River otters: 1

We’ll miss Pavia when we leave tomorrow morning!