The Arrival of Autumn

Summer’s lease hath all too short a date

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 18

It was early doors when we left the apartment this morning, with a threatening dark blue cloudscape at the station this morning to take us back to the bus stop outside Gambassi Terme where we left yesterday.

Poggibonsi station was full of school-age children, some stupefied by the early morning, two girls recording a TikTok dance reel, over and over again. Huge numbers of starlings wheeled and flocked in the sky, falling down all at once into the trees like ragged black handkerchiefs.

We picked up the trail exactly where we left off, and climbed the short distance into the town in search of a bar to supplement our breakfast. Inside were Pierre and Julie, the Canadians whom we met a couple of days ago, enjoying the start of a rest day. They were especially grateful for it since they had got caught out in the afternoon rain yesterday which they said had felt at times like a tornado, and they had had to shelter in the olive trees from the wind. It was a shame we weren’t on our rest day too, as it would’ve been wonderful to have sat with them for longer in the bar, chewing over life and putting it to rights. Another time!

We dropped off the crown of the hill, where we were high above the banks of low cloud blanketing the valleys. Far in the distance was a hot air balloon, and we wondered whether they could see pretty much of anything at all on their journey.

The sun had broken quite through a bank of the higher cloud, to show us San Gimignano on the horizon,

with a single sunny valley somewhere between us and its towers.

Yesterday‘s rain had taken all of the heat that had been stored in the asphalt, and laid all the dust. The scent of the wild mint was somehow even stronger from the damp plants, and as we walked down the long gentle slope into the first valley the sun on the other side picked out for us the hatched lines of vineyards, and soft pointillist shapes of olive trees.

There were several Aziende agricole which tried to tempt us with early-morning offers of wine and oil tasting, free coffees and bathrooms. It felt a little early for wine, although we could always do a bit of oil for our joints.

As we came down into the valley the vineyards stopped and rough countryside rolled out on either side. In the hedgerows, sloes, spindleberry, rosehips and hawthorn, some even with unseasonal blossom.

Hidden in the thickets were cirl bunting, corn bunting and Sardinian warblers, calling ceaselessly.

Yesterday’s storms were evident in scoured out sections of paths.

The clay clutched at our shoes.

The hilltops were invariably crowned with villas, including one large complex being marketed exclusively to English speakers. It reminded me a little bit of reading Summer’s Lease out loud on holiday in Umbria about a quarter of a century ago.

The reception areas were exquisitely planted with olives, rain-pearled roses, and banks of rosemary with late flowers for the bees.

At the top of one particularly long and stiff climb was a dramatic set of pines and cypress trees, pretty overwhelming in the size and impact with the sun behind them. It was payoff for the long, steep climb out of the humid valley.

One of the hilltop villas reminded me hugely of the layout of a house we had once rented near Montepulciano with a large group of friends and family when Oscar was six months old. I think the colour of the stone must have been similar. My mother painted a picture of it which we have in our bedroom, and I look at it every day.

There were more roses in pots, still in full flower but drenched in last night’s rain. They’ll soon be over now.

The villa had an arched gateway that we ducked under, and as we went under it we looked up at the terracotta tile and wooden beam roof to see the summer’s house martin and barn swallow nests, now empty.

And now at last we were walking along one of those high ridges, rather than briefly up and over and down into a valley on the other side. Staying up meant that we got a succession of lovely views: San Gimignano, much nearer now,

and miles of glowing vineyards stretched out in the sun across the valley to the hills of Chianti in the distance.

San Gimignano — when were we last here?

The town had not changed, the long medieval road winding up to the two linked piazze, the almost miraculous towers which make the town famous rising at the road’s end.

What had changed was the crowds, even in the second week in October the streets were packed. On the main drag the shops were entirely given over to the high end tourist goods for which Tuscany is famous: wine, leather, stationary and charcouterie.

The stones of the Piazza del Duomo were as idiosyncratic as I remembered them. In the 12th and 13th century the famous skyline was created using calcare cavernoso, known in the region as the ‘stone for the tower’ (pietra da torri), a highly durable, porous limestone sourced from nearby hills.

There were set pieces like the old church of St Giovanni, afterwards St Francesco and now the ornithological museum, instead made of characteristic Tuscan polychrome stonework with alternating horizontal bands of white stone and dark green marble.

And the late 1100s Romanesque church of San Bartolo, in warm terracotta brick.

But San Gimignano is mostly about the linked piazze of the Duomo and the Cisterna. We parked ourselves on a handy block of stone to text family with birthdays today, when who should we see but Marieke, who had known we were passing through today and been waiting in the piazza for us. How wonderful of her!

We chatted, while on the steps of the Duomo a huge group of Italian schoolchildren, perhaps twelve years old, were playing a giant game of copycat slapping their thighs and chanting with two teachers in front of them.

We could have spent ages in Piazza della Cisterna,

but limited ourselves to checking out the ferri da cavallo, the horse-hitching hooks,

and, higher up the walls, the dragon-shaped wrought-iron sconces for flags or torches.

Then we lost ourselves in the backroads of the countryside south of San Gimignano.

The going was easy and the conversation cheerful,

and Peak Tuscany unrolled on either side, framed by olive trees.

There were better views of San Gimignano looking backwards, sun-soaked instead of silhouetted. We wondered whether there was a time of year when it might not be so full of tourists.

We doubted it. It is a glorious place, but overrun.

Our road led south now off the tarmac and into the countryside,

along a series of paths which took us down into valleys where the view back was lost, and we were completely swallowed up by conversation as much as the view.

One final set of steps down to a valley bottom was marked by a Francigena sign with an old walking boot tied to the top.

It has been there for so long that it’s started to be covered with green algae.

We crossed the stream on a set of stepping stones and hauled ourselves up to the top where the spitting rain started to develop into something more persistent. Stephen and Marieke stopped to put their rucksack covers on,

and now this was my big moment that I had been waiting for since August 31st: the apotheosis of THE PILGRIM PONCHO.

Stephen and Marieke thought it very droll.

But it kept me completely dry while we negotiated puddles,

and stepping stones.

We climbed up on a medieval cobbled path through olive groves,

into a strange meteorological landscape where there were black clouds boiling behind sunlit wooded hills.

And intense showers punctuated by sunshine in which we fairly basked.

We were high enough now that San Gimignano was luminously visible again for one final time, uniquely bathed in light at the top of dark, shadowy hills.

The showers were fragmented and hard to predict, even when we could see the clouds and the direction in which they were heading. Sometimes we lucky enough to coincide at the start of a heavy shower with a tree with thick foliage, such as a sessile oak. At other times we just marched on through the rain.

Once we were standing in strong sunlight and it was still raining heavily,

but eventually the sun won out and we found ourselves on the outskirts of Colle di Val d’Elsa.

We came in at the top of town by the (very old) Porta Nuova,

and said farewell to Marieke: It was such a pleasure walking with you today! We’re going to uncouple ourselves from Marieka’s stages now as she is doing a monster day to Siena tomorrow and we have a short 15km day to arrive in Monteriggioni, but it would be lovely to see her further on down the route.

Other pilgrims had started to congregate too, but we walked on down into the old city to Marco and David’s.

We have remarked that all of these Tuscan towns have a character all of their own, and Colle there’s no exception. Here the paving of the old town is a checkerboard of different colour dressed slabs,

and the architectural history of each building is written on its façade.

The buildings of Colle have their idiosyncratic local kind of stone, just as San Gimignano did. Here it is calcareous tufa (referred to locally as pietra spugna or spugnone, ‘sponge stone’).

It is a highly porous, lightweight variety of freshwater limestone formed by the precipitation of calcium carbonate over organic matter like moss, leaves, and twigs. The web-like spongy structure is left behind when the trapped plant material decomposes inside the hardened calcium carbonate shell.

We had had an orientation walk around the town the afternoon before with David. To get to the heart of Colle Vecchio you have to cross a bridge in the centre of town,

And reach the inner sanctum of narrow roads,

cavernous churches,

and tiny cut-though passages.

Some buildings — medieval — are exceptionally plain, and others — renaissance — are very highly decorated, like the old town hall.

We explored some of the way down from Colle Alto to Colle Basso, a steep brick descent.

No elevators here!

Stats for the Day
Distance: 27.58
Time: 5hrs 38
Elevation: 791 m