The Journey, not the Goal

I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, whence cometh my help

Psalm 121

We hadn’t been going very long this morning before we had a couple of delightful encounters. The first was with 79-year-old Andrea who hailed us from his bicycle. ‘Are you going to Rome?’ he asked, eagerly. He had done the whole journey on bicycle in 18 days from Canterbury to Rome 26 years ago, and it transpired that he had in fact done masses of long distance routes by bike in the UK. He was full of enthusiasm, and Stephen matched his, with a shared list of Italian makes of bike.

On the map we could see a shortcut but decided not to take it because at the top of a small hill (in the first 40 minutes we did more up and down than we have in the last week) was a 12th century Chapel dedicated to Thomas Beckett, almost contemporaneous with his martyrdom Im Canterbury in 1170.

Unfortunately, but so not unsurprisingly, it was locked, but we appreciated the gentle curve of the apse, with its blind arches and layers of cotta pilasters emphasising the sense of depth to the windows. Once the sun came out, the brick fairly glowed.

A teacher was standing outside the church’s main door, waiting for her school group who was going to do an activity on the little sports ground next door. She explained that the parish priest didn’t live around here anymore and the church was only unlocked on a Sunday. Sigh.

We were admiring a little market garden when along came a lady with a wheelbarrow full of crates to pick some of the crop.

She said they had had problem after problem this year trying to grow organically. She showed us the cabbages that had blown open with the heat,

and pointed to the covered crop away at the bottom of the field where they had had to cover the watermelons because the crows were flying down to peck at them. They like us have had flea beetle in their brassicas and the cavolo nero, but there was an organic insecticide (extremely expensive) that she said they’d used against the pest.

They have had problems with great fat larvae eating roots from underground, although to us the crops looked pretty good and it was a pleasure to chat with her. We were full of questions — but she had to work and we had to get on.

And in fact, just after we said goodbye, we officially LEFT THE PLAIN.

‘Isn’t this great?’ said Stephen.

And it was. Farmhouses were actually now above us on the rolling hills, and ahead a bell tower had additional height. I was catapulted back to the day we walked into Bourg-San-Pierre (although the hills here of course are nothing to the Alpine mountains — and not even really to the Apennines, which will begin properly tomorrow).

It was fantastic. Something to rejoice at. We could feel the sweat breaking out on our bodies as we climbed, which we found a bizarrely delightful feeling. We turned round frequently to see the views opening up behind us, revelling in the interesting horizon, angles of the slopes interacting visually with each other, cows tucked away in a barn with the hay all ready for them next door, shaded by tiles the same same mottled terracotta as the earth.

Today’s route took us along all the spines of the hills, which when Sigeric travelled would have been thickly forested and bristling with brigands. For us today they were simply a source of joy, as we looked out over the valleys to a succession of sister-spines, topped with farms, houses, churches with bell towers. It was simply wonderful to see.

A cyclist passed us, climbing the hill End wishing us a buon cammino. ‘Allez, allez!’ we replied.

There was a little flock of quiet partridges gathered underneath a ‘no hunting’ sign, exactly the same colours as the pale clods of earth. There were sloes, turning leaves, hips on climbing roses and red berries on hawthorn.

One hilltop farm presented us with the Italian arboreal trifecta: olive trees, Mediterranean pines, and Cypress trees.

We met George, pruning his pomegranate tree by the side of the road who asked us whether we knew Robert, a British potter who lives locally. He gifted us a pomegranate for the road.

And there was Desia, born to Italian ex-pats and raised in North Finchley, who found love in Italy and moved back to her ancestral Patria.

She works in the Scoiattolo (squirrel) Trattoria where we stopped for a much-needed second breakfast of coffee and local pastries; we signed their pilgrim diary and got their stamp in our credentials.

Evaldas aka Skateboard Dude came in, and joined the locals having, variously, mid-morning coffee (the capo with the newspaper), mid-morning bottled beers (the workmen), and mid-morning lambrusco with two ice cubes (the patsy whose job it was to listen to the capo pontificate). The chap with the blue shirt had refused to turn to face the capo and his sidekick, and ate his cake resolutely looking in the other direction.

We had gained height to go slightly off route to the bar, and lost it again to rejoin the path. There followed a lovely wooded section with leaves scrunching underfoot, and signs saying hunting was permitted, but only wild boar and only using the ‘girata’ hunting method which involves a group of hunters surrounding the animal.

Then there was a brutal pull up to a supposedly moated tower, although we couldn’t see any evidence of a moat and the tower was distinctly average.

And then we were walking slightly uphill, still, on seemingly the first properly grassy path since coming down into Italy.

There were fabulous views back over the plain — stretching into the far horizon without end. Had we really walked all that way? No wonder it had taken days.

At the very top of Noceto hill was a house with cerulean blue plaster, the colour of slightly faded chicory flowers and almost the same colour as the paler areas of today’s pale blue sky.

Round the back was a modular metal shed, rusting quietly, with a typically philosophical Italian take on the view opening out before us.

Into this view we walked, following the road winding around the head of the valley and looking down onto the farm houses on a lower spine. A windhover hung motionless in the air, a swallowtail butterfly underneath him. Earth tones: yellow, cream, russet, brown.

Views opened out in front of us as we stood looking out over the next valley,

and looking back the way we had come — the light creating quite a spectacularly different palette of colours.

We descended quite steeply down into the valley, thinking wryly that it had been a while since our knees had had to do this. We passed (yay!) a Lamborghini tractor and a milk lorry, and a caterpillar-tracked tractor for ploughing the steep clay hillsides.

We stopped for lunch on a shady bench in Cella in the middle of a fantastically well-equipped children’s playground. There was a breeze. And a loo.

It was not just because we were up in the hills that it felt cooler. The power of the sun has lessened: even at midday the sun now is noticeably lower in the sky; we are past the autumn equinox now.

After lunch was the shockingly steep last climb of the day, which felt quite a pull-up on a full stomach. But it was by no means impossible, and still so much better to feel our muscles working, and the necessity for really filling one’s lungs properly, right to the back of one’s shoulders. And the view back to Cella was tremendous.

Up on the top of this hill they seemed really to have suffered from a lack of water this year. All the trees were really struggling,

and roads and fields were cracked and fissured. Even some of the disused farm houses were struggling,

Or had struggled, in vain.

In Medesina several of the pilgrims were going to finish for the day. We noted the poignant war memorial to the members of the Italian Alpine regiment ‘who did not return’,

and it made me think of the memorial we’d seen as we left Fidenza, the suffering figure and the inscription ‘Scelsero la guerra perché odiavano la guerra. Soffrirono la schiavitù per ansia dei libertà. accettarono il dolore e la morte e amavano tanto la vita.’ ‘They chose war because they hated war. They suffered slavery out of a longing for freedom. They accepted pain and death and loved life so much.’ These statues were two moments today where we thought what a complex business it was to memorialise loss of life in war when partisans have to resist their own Fascist state. I felt consciously grateful to those who gave their lives to liberate this beautiful land that we were now free to enjoy.

It seemed a matter of a few kilometers to walk to the next village of Felegara, although it took over an hour. It was as though today we simply floated on air — although my leg muscles tell a different story. Stephen didn’t even tut when I stopped to take photos of the dozens of common blue butterflies on a large patch of sticky fleabane.

Ostello19 is barely a year old, and is owned by the commune and managed by Samuel and Maria Chiara.

Sam greeted us with a carafe of water and some warm conversation, and swore he didn’t mind that we were smelly and sweaty.

Compared to some of the filthy spaces we have recently slept in (and more importantly washed in — I hate showers which are so dirty I don’t want to get in them), this hostel is immaculate.

After some excellent advice about places to shop and eat, Sam gave us a quiet double room and left us peace to sort ourselves out for the night.

Stats for the Day

Distance: 27.67km

Time: 5 hrs 43 mins

Elevation: 533 meters

Today’s village feast that we will be missing: