Construction

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed, but a thing created is loved before it exists.

Charles Darwin

We had only 18km to walk today — something of a rest day — so we didn’t stop at all. To be honest there wasn’t anything to stop for: the stage was all on road and had some great lowlights (the industrial estate just before Porcari). And neither was there opportunity, since most everything was closed today, being Monday.

Lucca, however, was a really lovely city. Our arrival in Lucca marked the end of the Cicerone guidebook volume two, and our departure marked the start of volume three. This final guidebook is the shortest, with only 18 stages — we can now count the days left till we get to Rome on the fingers of all four of our hands (and sadly for Stephen it is even shorter since he is leaving from Bolsena to travel home for work, just a week from the end). Something of a momentous place, then, Lucca.

It was also the first town that felt really ‘Tuscan’ to us, that reminded us of holidays past — mostly because of the architecture. Everywhere we turned there was something recognisable: the increasing divisions of the window lights in the header photo, for example (with no mullions on the ground floor, one on the first and two on the second, creating a single-light window, then a double, then a triple window), and the marbled Gothic/Romanesque façades of the churches.

This one had an air balloon rising in stately manner behind it: that would be a great way to travel!

There were glorious architectural details everywhere, from water fountains,

to medieval windows made from the thinnest possible sheets of alabaster, sufficiently translucent to let light through and create a dim glow inside, quite enough to see by.

There were enviable colonnaded balconies converted with plants in pots,

and the biggest plane tree I have ever seen, so large it filled its courtyard and reached its branches right over the street outside.

The church of the Santissima Trinità was a much later architectural design, quite Mannerist in its outsize, rusticated quoins, totally unlike the delicate Romanesque work and rather projecting a sense of rugged strength and defensive fortification at the weakest point of the wall. Nothing about the building suggested it was a church to me.

We met the two Belgian pilgrims in this photo later: they were not in the same hostel as us tonight, but rather in a hotel they had stayed at six years before. The more ‘Luccan’ aspect of the photograph though is the bicycle. The streets were full of them, sometimes propped up singly, sometimes in an organised fashion, and sometimes simply in heaps.

One of the things we liked best about the city though, was how later use of ancient buildings is visible in the way newer building work is keyed into the old.

Thus the Porta dei Borghi, for example, dating from 1198 and originally one of the gateways through the early medieval defensive walls, until the 16th/17th walls were built for which Lucca is now so famous and through which we passed into the city yesterday, was originally 12 metres high but significantly dismantled during the building of the later walls. Once it was inside the city it had a renaissance of its own, and now is a solid base for the apartments built over it.

In a similar vein the remains of the brick arches across the front of this building in Piazza San Francesco show that it was originally constructed as medieval case torri, tower houses. The porticoes were later bricked in a Renaissance-style rectangular windows with shutters added.

We walked out of Lucca on the Via Fillunga, and that was practically it for anything nice to look at until we got to Altopascio, although we didn’t know it yet.

It took the first couple of kilometres to get out of the embrace of the hills we had been walking through for the last couple of days. They rose gently on either side, with farmland in between.

One of the architectural details in the countryside around Lucca was the terracotta tile ventilation systems for old farm buildings. This example was pretty much decorative, being for the most part filled in from behind,

but (as my hayloft expert explained) this was the ur-design, tiles set on the hypotenuse (he actually said that) in a herringbone pattern, so that whichever way the wind was blowing the hayloft would be ventilated.

It reached its apotheosis in this old long barn, now turned into individual lock ups. Stephen could have kept his Piaggio Ape in one.

Hayloft expert scoffed at this final example: ‘that’s just lazy,’ he said.

In Capannori we made an attempt to visit the 12th century church of Santi Quirico e Giulitta,

where there was a service going on, so we tiptoed out toot sweet.

It’s another one of these buildings which has been remade: originally documented as early as 786, it was completely rebuilt in the 10th century, and again in its current form two hundred years later using materials from the original iterations.

We also made an abortive attempt to get some money out of the bank; I think we might have asked it for too much — there wasn’t an English screen option, so Stephen may have panicked a bit and started pressing random buttons.

Our daily dose of stadia was provided today by Capannori’s offer — currently under construction. They appear to have the seats in before the track (the sporting version of the cart before the horse). At least it means that sports fans can sit in comfort and watch the builders at work.

Some of the roads we were directed to walk along might originally have been country roads but have now been swallowed up by the urban sprawl. There was a good deal of new building going on, including this grey house where they had painted the colour cards on either side of the door in an attempt to decide which grey to choose. ‘Fifty shades of wrong,’ said Stephen.

Also wrong was some of the recycling. We watched a little Richard Scarry-type truck collecting yellow bags of plastic recycling, except for one, which got left on the pavement with a sticker attached firmly to the side. ‘They tried to hide stuff inside which isn’t recyclable,’ the driver told me as he passed, through his open window. I think he thought I was critical that he hadn’t picked the bag up.

In fact, I was in full agreement. The whole of the next section of road was absolutely awful as we came through the industrial estate on the outskirts of Porcari. Lorries thundered by, choking us with their exhaust. There was a disgusting river of rubbish chucked out of van windows all along the road, including a bag of human excrement thrown onto the pavement (drivers under time pressure) and driven over. Porcari by name, Porcari by nature.

The actual town of Porcari would have been okay except that everything was closed, but for the high school which had the most extraordinary entrance on the first floor, with two very steep staircases leading up to it. It looked like a prison. Or something from Pink Floyd’s The Wall.

After the one early this morning we didn’t see any more balloons in the sky over head, but we did see this bizarre and quite distressingly-pruned olive tree, all hung about with tea lights in the shape of hot air balloons. And a toucan.

And right on the edge of town was this once-beautiful palazzo that really could do with someone to love it and rebuild.

Where the plaster was coming off, the damp getting in and accelerating the process, you could see the original stone construction underneath. This had been visible earlier in the day with two palazzi next door to each other, one with the plaster on, and one with the plaster stripped off. We liked both of them, although the stone version suited the countryside better.

After the horrors of Porcari and the industrial estate we were absurdly grateful to have a kilometre or so of greener land. At first just a green verge on either side of the pavement (you can see how desperate we were).

And then a footpath rather than asphalt, briefly alongside a vineyard. In the verges were bedstraws, chicory, fleabane, low-growing mallow — such a relief to walk past. And there was a large leather ground beetle Carabus coriaceus, so called because its wing coverings are supposed to resemble leather.

And apparently in the scrub ground thereabouts was a colony of feral cats. We didn’t see any, but liked the sign which insisted upon their protection and quoted the local laws in this regard.

The building with the tower behind the vineyard turned out to be the old Saint Peter’s Hospital, the sister Ostello to ours in town, three kilometres away. Cyclists were eating cake and drinking tea. We pressed on.

We covered those kilometres in quick order, and arrived in town with our blood sugar levels dropping. Before we completely collapsed we managed to find an alimentari still open for bread, cheese, meat, and tomatoes (and figs! The tiny green ones which are so sweet and delicious), and took them into the park to eat. We had a couple of hours before our hostel opened.

Although there were no more hot air balloons, what was overhead, however, was a Hercules transporter plane circling round and round; initially we thought it was more than one plane, but after it came over for the seventh time, it was clear that this was not an enormous squadron of transporters owned by the Italian military, taking off one by one. It flew increasingly lower, and was incredibly loud.

Joining us outside the hospital and waiting to be let in were a couple of French pilgrims who had also started out from Lausanne, a few days after us. We were the only four staying in the hostel, fortunate because yesterday between the two hostels there had been about 25 pilgrims staying!

Stats for the Day
Distance: 18km
temperature: 18°
Elevation: 18m