Detective work

The first rule of a detective is to observe

Agatha Christie

We were both enervated and listless this morning, I think possibly at the thought of another probably brutal 22 km on tarmac, and our route out of town didn’t pass any bars. So although we had had some excellent oats for breakfast which Stephen had got ready last night, we hadn’t had a coffee when we started, and I think both of us needed that jolt. Luckily the restaurant had been open last night when we’d got out of the hospital and it had served us an enormous plate of various salamis and a bowl each of wonderful pasta and bean stew, but that hadn’t seemed to translate to much energy or get up and go this morning.

Fidenza is a straight 13km ride down the SS9, but our path took us the long way, winding around the back roads exactly the same as yesterday. By the time we got going the sun was already up, but we hadn’t had the energy to make as early a start as the rest of the pilgrims in the hostel did today.

Rather than what we were looking at, it was a soundscape today which first caught our attention. The railway, somewhere off to the right, and a single duck calling from an agriturismo (a farm B&B). Watch out, duck! They’re looking for you in Valconasso for their spit-roast duck festival. And indeed closer to hand someone was out shooting with their dog: we heard the high pitch of the dog whistle, followed by a single shot. A cow lowed, and both our heads turned at the unfamiliar sound; we have been aware that the region has a high number of dairy farms, and if it’s true that Parmesan needs to be fed on grass, then we should be seeing fields of cows. So far, there have been none. The cow we had heard was coming from an open barn way to the left.

At the next turn of the road we did see a cow shed, open at both ends with gigantic ceiling fans cooling the cows in their pens beneath. There wasn’t enough room on this farm for a milking parlour, though — so were they milk or beef cows? And if the former, where did they milk them?

The next farm we passed was on a much larger scale, strung out on either side of the original old farmhouse and small hayloft. This one had extensive open cow sheds. I asked Stephen whether he thought the silos were for feed, and he hypothesised, looking at the silage and hay bales, that they might have grown barley or another grain crop on the fields between us and the farm, cut them for straw and feed, and were now making further silage cuts.

That would be strange, though, because Parmesan cheese requires grass-fed cows and no silage. So we again came back to our first thought: we should be seeing fields full of animals.

Crops were clearly being grown for feed, though, because one farmyard was full of a colourful array of machinery and tractor attachments which my agricultural expert reliably informed me were a variety of hay turners, mowers and bailers.

Further along the same road, we passed a cheese factory, clanking comfortably and emitting cheesy wafts, with two pretty dogs at the entrance. There is joined-up local farming going on, therefore.

But we were still confused about the lack of grass, which is of course how we typically raise our cattle in the UK, most especially our dairy cows. Along the road the partial answer came by Googling a photograph of an unfamiliar crop growing as far as the eye could see between individual farms.

It turns out to be sorghum, a fast growing forage crop which can be grazed or bailed up; these fields still had some way to go before it was ripe enough to harvest, so we wondered again whether they were planting a second crop on land which already been grown for something else this year.

Chiaravalle della Colomba not only rejoiced in a beautiful name, but also (after yesterday‘s near-absolute dearth) in a high density of benches. All along the village approach, where two operativi were smartening up the sorghum field edge with strimmers, benches behind the weeds were revealed.

And there was a pilgrim set of benches and tables, and a water tap too.

Unexpectedly there was also AN OPEN BAR where we could finally have our morning coffee,

filled with smartly-dressed, chilled retired people chatting the morning away,

a huge bottle of grappa on tap at the counter,

and the grumpiest waitress in Christendom.

We sat outside in the glow of the early morning sun, thinking that the day was looking up.

The village Christmas tree was surrounded by benches, and there were more along the curve of the road. It seems to be a village where people do absolutely nothing but sit down. Perhaps the group in the bar move on from their bar tables to another series of ventures, and then just migrate around the village to continue conversations.

The name of the village which I had thought so lovely as we passed its sign on the way in turned out to be named after the Abbey of Clairvaux in France that the Francigena routed by last year. Bernard of Clairvaux had founded a Cistercian monastery here in 1155, and Archbishop Sigeric must have stayed in both. Whilst Chiaravalle had been sacked in 1248 and suppressed in both the 18th and 19th centuries, its 13th century cloister remains intact.

Walking through the doors we were immediately transported by the harmonious regularity of the delicate pink Verona marble columns, our eyes drawn inwards to the group of ancient olive trees communing in the centre of the garden.

The corner columns of the cloister were marvellously carved to suggest that knots has been tied in the marble.

The decorative Romanesque brickwork was extraordinary,

as were the details of the corbels carrying the loads of the arched vaults.

Someone had filled in the missing head of Madonna with a paintbrush, surprisingly successfully — unless it was original underpainting for modelling in situ.

It took us ages to walk round. We simply soaked up the atmosphere and let it sink into our tired muscles and bones.

As we came round to the final corner, a Cistercian monk unlocked the door and stepped through into a tantalising room where we caught glimpses of stills and other paraphernalia where they must distill the liqueurs that monks have been doing so expertly for over a thousand years. He swiftly closed the door behind him, which was a great shame! Their liqueurs are a local specialty.

A foot from the cloister led into the Basilica itself, a decidedly 18th century space.

The delight here was the number of late-18th century frescoes,

entirely and not particularly religiously reminiscent of the Palace of Versailles.

Chapels were decorated in the style of luxurious dressing rooms for courtiers,

and doorways were surrounded with frescoes as though they were to lead into reception rooms.

It was like nothing we had ever seen in a church.

Just before I left, I turned for one last look, to see the light from the clerestory windows illuminating the fresco of the dove, the ‘colomba’ of the village’s name and the sign of the Holy Spirit.

As we walked away, newly enthused and feeling rejuvenated, we turned around to see the scale of the Cistercian complex. There was not the same sense of economic and organisational precariousness suggested by some of the convents we have stayed at — this abbey was clearly doing very well for itself.

We crossed the busy A1 motorway (the Autostrada del Sole, Italy’s longest motorway, running from Milan all the way down to Naples) on a strangely constructed bridge. It had steel parapets with overhanging mesh, presumably to stop desperate people, or people throwing objects over the edge onto the carriageways, but the mesh was tied to the frame with steel hoops, with a sign saying that everything was under alta tensione, which suggested to us that it was all electrified. This was a mystery. Further disincentive to interfere with the safety structure?

We were still walking on roads, the same as before and of course after our break, now in hotter temperatures (in fact, by the time we got to Fidenza at about 1.30, the pharmacy thermometers were registering a temperature of 29°) But we felt so much more energised, positive and interested after our coffee stop, and after our visit to the beautiful cloister.

We now realised that we had thought to be cover crops,

were perhaps rather intended to be harvested for hay. Stephen had seen a farmer turning hay with a very wide boom, gathering a much wider width of crop than would be usual for a thick grass cut, into narrow lines. Stephen crossed over into one of the fields with standing bales, to see if he could tell what was being dried in the sun.

The bales were indeed this same low-growing, quick-growing plant, which we thought to be some kind of clover or alfalfa — although it wasn’t quite like either.

All the farm houses we passed had their outbuildings crammed with haybales, and the air around one, very close to the track, was filled with the sweetest, fragrant and medicinal herbal scent imaginable.

We supposed that if one was raising dairy cows for a cheese like Parmesan, which required grass-fed animals, that this fragrant hay might count, because it had not been fermented into silage.

When we had set out this morning, we had been quite silent but now we were back to our usual form, chatting about the landscape about us, and the people living on it. One of the little farmhouses had set up a shady pilgrim bench, and even a hammock for really weary pilgrims to rest in.

It was a shame that it was not time to eat our lunch, because it would have made a good stop.

We were quite surprised not to see Skateboard Dude already in the hammock. He is a pilgrim who seems to be travelling along the Francigena with a floppy bucket hat covering his sun-bleached, long, curly, surfer-dude locks, and a helmet perched on top of everything.

He seems a carefree chap, and I’m sure Sigeric would’ve considered skateboarding to Rome if he had had the option.

Once we diverted off the tarmac, however, Skateboard Dude was temporarily impeded by the gravel track, and we could see him a few fieldlengths ahead, walking and carrying the skateboard. This section of track had a simple, two-foot verge to it that had been colonised by bedstraws, vervain, chicory and (we were happy to see again) the autumn crocuses that we had enjoyed in Switzerland.

It was really heartening to see that as soon as you have these mixed sources of pollen, you get a healthy population of butterflies and moths, and we capered about the track trying to get photographic evidence of the bath white.

One ex-farmhouse had converted the attached hayloft really cleverly. Typical barn conversions in the UK fully glaze the archway as feature windows, but we imagined that here in such a hot country such a large expanse of glazing would just cook you inside your house. Here they had recessed a wall slightly behind the archway, and set large shuttered windows in the shaded space. It was a solution which worked really well.

In the village of Castione Marchesi we were first delighted by the sound of all the children in the village school shrieking and laughing in their playground. Boys were engaged in an energetic game of football, all shouting at once to be passed the ball, and their teachers were congregated by the steps chatting amiably.

We stopped at the Pratogallo bar (‘lawn chicken’) to cross a number of things off today’s to-do list. Toilet, coffee, water, salty crisps and paying the €20 flat-rate fee for having attended the minor injuries clinic last night. I had been somewhat confused by the complex form detailing the bill and all the options for payment, but the extremely talkative owner of the bar was completely unfazed and dealt with it in two shakes of her very old, fat dog’s tail.

She runs not only the village bar, but the pizzeria, the cigarette sales and the administrative payment system for the village. She works 18-hour days, is 62 years old and has pretty much had enough. I would say that she looked very well on it, but she has decided to retire in the New Year and, who knows, she said, she may just get on the pilgrimage route herself.

In the bar we found Skateboard Dude, who it turns out is from Lithuania. He consented to have his photograph taken, but we will have to wait for the next time we see him to catch his name.

As we were leaving, the Brazilian and the Swiss Pilgrims turned up. We are all making for Fidenza and we supposed that most of us will end up congregating at the hostel tonight.

There were more mysteries to solve after our break. The harvested fields here had ditches all the way round and irrigation channels built into them. But as Stephen observed, they are planted right up to the very edge of the earthen banks, so why don’t the banks collapse? Presumably the tractors are not going anywhere near the banks themselves, but their harvesting and ploughing equipment must stick out quite far, enabling them to reach right to the edges without crushing the banks.

We thought we might have resolved the mystery of the wire hoops on the metal parapet of the bridge too. We recrossed the Autostrada del Sole where it ran alongside the railway, and the same bridge went over both. Here it was the rail bridge that had the protective parapet, and not the motorway. We realised that the extra protection was not needed for what was below, but what was above: the high tension powerlines that ran parallel to the road and rail tracks.

Crossing the bridge marked a turn onto the home straight towards Fidenza, and festive bunting was provided by a yellow form of autumn colchicum, and a staggering crop of sloes (something for which I have for some reason not encountered Italian enthusiasm).

I was enthusiastic, however, at once again trying to photograph the Bath white (almost succeeding but not quite), although I did manage to get a picture of a torpid noctuid moth, Helicoverpa zea — the tomato fruitworm, also called the corn earworm. Its caterpillars are a major agricultural pest of tomatoes and maize, although this moth was minding its own business sipping nectar through its long proboscis from the flowers one of the roadside rucola salad plants.

We were getting close to Fidenza now, on bike paths deeply fissured by the summer heat.

Bikes there were in evidence, although on the road rather than the path, including this classic, an Italian make called Bianchi (I listen to this stuff so you don’t have to, Reader).

Fidenza was a small city so we located our hostel easily; it was unstaffed and required us to show a QR code to a camera at the gate and on the door. The only other pilgrim was the Brazilian who we had been tag-teaming all day.

We followed him down the road which led to the breathtaking apsidal end of the cathedral of San Donnino, in a warm yellow sandstone with a wedding-cake gallery of delicate white marble columns at the top, so light because they didn’t have to take any of the weight of the structure.

Several ancient carvings had been inset into the curved wall — our favourite was a dog chasing a leaping reindeer and grabbing for its haunches.

We could pay attention to individual elements of the rear of the building because there weren’t that many,

but the quantity of early 13th century Romanesque sculptural decoration on the front was almost too much to process.

Without a doubt the stars of the show were the lions at the main entrance,

one seeming to be fighting a serpent made of marble lace with its jaws fastened in the lion’s throat.

Less violent was the ram holding up one of the columns to the side doors, although he did look somewhat dejectedly burdened.

It was difficult to get through the doors for there was so much to look at on the outside, the central bas-relief story of the martyrdom of poor San Donnino, for example (his head is being chopped off by the soldiers of his erstwhile boss, after he’d announced his conversion — although the head itself is depicted being borne aloft by angels),

or the quieter decoration of the side doors, depicting St Michael and the dragon, a bishop and what looked to me encouragingly like a pilgrim right at the top.

The church’s main interest was its exterior but there was one detail of the interior that we found fascinating: a winter background to a Madonna and child, the composition framed with leafless trees and the whole being painted with much black. It was an arresting image.

From the Duomo we made our way to the second best ice cream shop in Italy: Magritte.

Gianluca got his love for cooking during the years spent in the kitchen with his grandmother. We tasted his ‘antica crema’ ice cream, made to her recipe, which was so good it literally made the hairs stand up on my forearms.

In fact we couldn’t choose two flavours each from the board. So we began with two sorbets, mint and lime, and orange and bergamot. They were exceptional, so deliciously fresh that we almost stopped there.

But we had intended them as a palate cleanser, so we pressed on with salted butter and hazelnut (Stephen), and zuppa inglese and gianduia (me). They were ice creams which demanded our whole attention.

We chatted at length with the brilliant Gianluca, who has a larger shop in Piacenza (which we had missed). The local milk is too heavy and overpowering a vehicle for the flavours that Gianluca wants, so he sources his milk from South Tyrol, in Germany. The cows there are pasture-fed and the milk is lighter and can let his flavours shine through.

The judges for the national awards that Gianluca has won visit secretly twice a year, and do not make their presence known. To come second in the hundred best ice cream parlours in Italy is an extraordinary achievement — although Stephen did say rather sadly that we can only go downhill from here (since the number one on the list is in Milan and not on our route).

What a day. It has started so unpromisingly, and turned out to be wonderful. How lucky we are.

Stats for the Day
Distance: 25.64
Elevation: negligible
Ice cream flavours sampled: 7
Beautiful hot showers with proper hair wash: 1