la terra arida / che rompe sotto Siena il suo mareggiare morto
Mario Luzi
the arid land / that breaks its dead tide beneath Siena
Michelle and Stuart had five guests staying last night: Stuart’s mother May, a film crew preparing to do a two-day video shoot in Michelle‘s school, and us two smelly pilgrims. Dinner guests also included their landlord Luca and his wife Letizia — so nine of us! It was wonderful seeing them again, and there was a lot to catch up on as well as getting to know their family and friends; nineteen to the dozen pretty much describes it. Thank you for the shower and the laundry!
We all got going very early this morning, with Stuart efficiently serving up the perfect pilgrim breakfast at 6.30am of smoked salmon and scrambled eggs on toast, with pan au chocolat and coffee. He then heroically drove us back into Siena, before going on to a spa day at Rapolo Terme with May. There was no soaking in hot mineral baths for us: we had 27km to walk.
The early morning drive into Siena gave us a small foretaste of the landscape to come, for it was to be quite different to the lush and fertile ochre sandstones or the limestone landscapes north of Siena of the last week.
We enjoyed a walk through the much quieter streets of Siena in the early morning, out to Port Roma on the south-eastern side of the city, an area I didn’t know at all.
This year’s August Palio winners, the Contrada of Nicchio, the Shell, had had their end of season banquet in recent days, and flags were up everywhere, lining the roads as we picked our way through what looked like gridlock but what was in fact simply a couple of cars driving into the city past some vehicles parked on narrow streets.
Nicchio seemed to be celebrating all of the city districts, not just their own.
There was just time to appreciate two final hitching posts,
before walking out under the monumental structure of Siena’s Porta Romana, connecting Siena to Rome on the Via Cassia for the last seven hundred years.
Once outside the walls the Francigena took us swiftly out of the city and immediately into countryside along a 3km hill spine with slopes falling away on either side.
To the right were the beginnings of the clay hills through which we would be walking for most of the day. They were bridged here near the city by a flyover on which drivers in stationary traffic blocked by an accident were losing their patience and sitting on their horns.
To the left, tantalisingly, was the ridge beyond which lay the unconverted farmhouse in which my friend Mary and I lived for almost a year, forty years ago. I kept looking over at the ridge and did eventually figure out where the evening bus used to drop us, from where we had to climb a steeply winding road up and over the ridge into the valley. Unfortunately the house itself was hidden by the ridge.
Somewhere along our ridge, though, we passed the Siena city limit sign, and then I really felt I was in terra incognita. We hadn’t realised that so much of our minds were focused on getting down into Tuscany and on Siena. Now we were travelling to places we know nothing about. We turned round for one last view of the city.
Today’s walk was to be mostly flat, and as the ridge dropped us gently down on a strada bianca into the Arbia river valley, we could see we were going to be passing through a small industrial estate, and our hearts sank a little.
However, it turned out to be a fantastically interesting-looking and organised breakers’ yard at one end, and a high-tech recycling centre at the other.
The carcasses of cars were being sorted, stripped, and hung on huge storage racks.
Smaller storage racks were being used for all the bits that came out of them, sorted from massive piles by huge conveyor belts along which different kinds of materials were separated.
Further along in the plant, other kinds of materials were being meticulously recycled — waste bins and skips, for example, a pile of which towered over the security fences.
A cycle and pedestrian path had been created next to the road, the length and straightness of which revealed it to be the Via Cassia.
Between us and the roadway was a border of flowers: scabious, viburnum, chicory, fleabane, a couple of kinds of mint, which in the warm sun and sheltered location were all still in flower, and all attracting butterflies.
On the other side in an area of scrubby bushes like guelder rose, bramble and hawthorn provided shelter and autumn berries for a good number of bird species.
I was humming with happiness by the time this lovely corridor came to an end, although Stephen was more forward-focused, on the delicious smell of torrefazione, coffee roasting, coming from one of the units in the (actual) industrial estate ahead. We were hoping for a coffee tasting and vendita diretta al pubblico, but instead found a bar where we could order proper coffee and have a decent sit down.
Other pilgrims arrived and departed, and we fell in with Amanda and Tom from near Adelaide in Australia, walking to Radicofani before hooking up with their son in Austria, and we walked with them almost until the end of this 27km day.
Now the distinctive part of today’s landscape began: the Creti Senesi, or Sienese claylands.
These are a series of rolling hills the heavy clay soils of which were marine sediments laid down over the course of one and a half million years during the Pliocene.
The bare hills are agriculturally most suitable for arable crops, certainly not for grape growing, and at this time of year, recently ploughed by the many tractors with caterpillar tracks we saw scattered about the landscape, they reveal the full range of tints and shades, from greys to browns and whites where the clay contains gypsum.
At other time of the year they may be green or golden with wheat, or yellow with crops of sunflowers and oil-seed rape, or dotted about with some of the hay bales now in storage, some of which we saw being loaded onto a huge articulated lorry.
The planting tradition which the area is most known for is of lining the roads winding to the tops of the hills with cypress trees,
a sight of complete aesthetic satisfaction,
or in graceful lines following the ridges of the hills,
like the spines of grey porcupines picked out agains the skies.
Looking up the area on the Internet one finds descriptions of the Creti as ‘a very special natural area, quiet and almost untouched by tourists. Here you can truly experience the “original” Tuscan landscape’, which focus on its ‘lunar beauty’.
The landscape however is not ‘original’ — it has been eroded significantly by agricultural practices, which have transformed the original biancane formations (geothermally active areas of white rocks and soils) and calanchi badlands (where clay bedrocks have eroded over time into steep gullies and ribbed ridges).
The original landscapes were distinctive ecosystems with unique flora and fauna, largely now lost to soil enrichment, turning the clays into land only suitable for growing wheat, sunflowers and fodder crops.
However, the landscape being as it is, we all enjoyed the experience of walking through it, with occasional encounters with cats,
cyclists,
and some of the artworks along a sculpture trail — most of which we had some difficulty understanding.
Occasionally we encountered other pilgrims scattered through the landscape, sitting in hay barns or propped up against tree trunks or banks of earth, resting or eating lunch.
But mostly we were walking as a four or in pairs, enjoying the camaraderie of the path.
and as an added bonus I also enjoyed the occasional clump of fleabane, host to any number of common blue butterflies.
The four of us split up only once, Amanda and Tom to walk a more panoramic route on a ridge while instead we followed a straight farm track a couple of kilometres along the valley floor.
Both I think were lovely options.
Our paths rejoined at a sign simultaneously warning us and telling us not to worry about dogs on the path — I think probably three in particular which tend to run free while their owners are walking them, rather than those lone livestock guardian dogs we have heard of, unsupervised out in the countryside.
Ponte d’Arbia is a tiny village which has grown up around a crossing of the Arbia river. We had rented a double room in a house which turned out to be empty apart from us, with a well equipped kitchen and a great view of the bridge, and the heron and white egrets which stood patiently in the water, waiting for their fish.
We have another 27 km walk tomorrow, and then we can look forward to a couple of shorter days.
Stats for the Day
Distance: 27.3km
Time: 5hrs 53
Pace: 4.6km/h
How bare those ploughed hills looked. Did you hear many birds on that section? Thank goodness for fleabane and butterflies.