Last Day with Stephen

May the road rise to meet you
The wind be always at your back

Celtic blessing

It had been a really good idea to pick a pensione for last night’s stop. We did not have to get out until 10 o’clock, so it felt like we were having a bit of a lie-in, and we only short 16 km day in front of us. We had a relaxed start to the day.

In the bar this morning one of the two people who had toured us around the catacombs yesterday was having her pre-shift coffee, and I thanked her for the tour, and complimented her on her really beautiful shoes. ‘I know I don’t look like someone who cares about fashion right now,’ I said, but they are really smart.’

The first section of the walk was all about the view. The path climbed high and looked out over the lake.

The habitat felt fairly exotic, not just Mediterranean. The water of the lake had felt quite warm yesterday evening, and we wondered whether the lake (a huge, ancient volcanic crater) was big enough at 113km² to create a local climate.

The houses all along the hill were distinct, gated villas, all very grand, with video cameras and guard dogs. Some of them were quite aggressive but this pair of Maremma sheep dogs were curious and friendly.

There were some high-up vineyards (later
we were to see a huge expanse — Montefiascone is a noted wine-growing area),

but most of what was going on today was yet more olive harvesting. It’s extraordinary that people are still having to park their cars in the shade this late in the year.

There was one last magnificent view,

and then we plunged into the woodland that would characterise the next section of the walk. It seemed to have been logged years ago, and the regrowth was quite mature.

Then we climbed up over a rocky ridge where the path felt open and airy with plenty of lizards basking on the baked earth,

followed by mixed deciduous woodland with sun filtering through the leaves and branches,

and an understory constituted by pink drifts of wild cyclamen as far as the eye could see.

This was obviously a very popular place to come and hike at weekends; we passed stacks of local walkers coming in the opposite direction, and near one car park were two groups, picnicking on tables amongst the trees.

Another group, a multigenerational family, was down by the stream paddling or bathing in a small pool underneath a waterfall.

It was a pleasant place — and we crossed over the small stream at a fountain covered in maidenhair fern, next to which someone had stacked wood, perhaps for outdoor cooking.

There was a tantalising poster showing several extremely interesting-looking features: basaltic columns, and well-preserved sections of the Roman Via Cassia which we would have to detour off route to see. We then missed the turning and were quite annoyed with ourselves as that would have made the day.

We contented ourselves with studying the geology of the road cuttings, and wondered how many years of geological activity they represented.

Some contained sizeable rock formations of clearly volcanic origins, and wrapped around them were the same kind of loose sandstones as yesterday; tree roots went through the sandstone and around the super-dense volcanic rock.

In other places there were small, friable grey and white lumps of an unfamiliar rock embedded in the sandstone. We wondered if the Bolsena eruptions had thrown out the boulders and the grey rocks and they’d somehow ended up being later entombed in sandy soils, or whether during the eruption they had embedded themselves in the sandy surrounding soils.

At the edge of the forested section was a car full of hunters, not with orange flashes this time, just guns. Didn’t ask whether they had caught anything.

We now came out onto a main road where we had to kick our way through the rubbish thrown from cars. It was disgusting.

And when we turned off onto a long white gravel track, a car accelerated intentionally behind us (Stephen was walking at the back), and only just braked at the last minute. When we moved to the side the driver sped up again, covering us with dust and laughing.

We began to feel a bit battered. We had been going steadily up pretty much all day, losing a bit of height and then climbing again, and tiny (or not so tiny) bits of grit and rock kept getting in our shoes. I tried to concentrate on the sweep of dark ploughed earth in a field around an oak tree,

and on the fruits of the true service tree (Sorbus domestica), which are apparently edible but need to be bletted, which is an ugly word and an unpleasant concept. We left the fruit on the ground.

There was a huge pull up for the last 3km, past some uninspiring houses.

One had a badly-drawn picture near the gate of ‘the little donkey on the Francigena’. I wondered whether it was supposed to be a picture of me. I certainly felt like one.

The views from the top of the hill were simply terrific — back down to the lake over extremely fertile volcanic soils, including vineyards of the Trebbiano and Malvasia grapes used to produce Est!! Est!! Est!! wine, a straw-yellow white wine for which Montefiascone holds the DOC designation.

And views also forward to Montefiascone itself, quite close now, covering the top of its hill and spilling down the side.

But first we had to pass the 100km mark — the ceremonial 100km milestone out from Rome on the Cassia.

There was also a Francigena post, which we would have missed completely if two kind German pilgrim women in front hadn’t told us that it had a secret door in the side in which a 100km stamp for the credential is kept.

In fact the 100km mark is only valid for cars, as the Francigena has 132.8km to walk from that point. However, it is true that 100km is the minimum distance a pilgrim has to walk to get the Testimonium from the Vatican.

We walked up into the town — a bit grubby and disappointing.

The Benedettine sisters lived in a convent up narrow street and when we arrived we couldn’t see at all how to get in. There was no bell or door knocker. The church was closed. There was a dark passageway with an ex-chapel at the bottom — altogether creepy — which gave out onto the street behind the church.

I tried phoning the convent number, but there was no answer.

I walked back down the road until I found a step up to an abandoned house and sat on it, and googled hotels on booking.com. I felt utterly despondent.

We was just about to call one when a car came down the road being driven by an enthusiastic nun who stopped and told us with ebullient energy through the open window that we had to go back, open the door and use the entry phone inside. ‘Go on!’ she chivvied.

Which is what we did. And we were let in by jolly sister Maria Maddalena, a tiny nun from Equador, who somehow had ended up on the top of a hill in Italy in a monastery some parts of which dated from the 12th century.

Supper was at 7pm. We thought that this was a lovely circular way to end our walk together, since the second day of our short time in France on the Francigena together had been with the nuns in Wisques. Their food had been such a poor offering, but it had felt like an extraordinary privilege to be able to share it. What would we be given here?

We needn’t have worried. For the eight of us pilgrims there was a huge dish of pasta with a homemade tomato and vegetable sauce that we could barely manage to clear. Followed by a meat course with huge amounts of aubergine and fennel ratatouille, plus lettuce and tomato salad to follow. Then there was a gigantic plate of fruit: persimmons and plums and nectarines. And we couldn’t believe it when two bottles of homemade white wine were put on the table.

We practically rolled into the salon where we were told to make conversation, until an Italian gentleman who seemed to be part of the confident organisation said we needed to come and look at the sisters’ vegetable garden.

He took us outside to overlook a dark patch with trees: persimmons, nespole, apples. The tomatoes and lettuce for our salad at supper had come out of the garden, and I think the vegetables for the tomato sauce too. The lights of Viterbo twinkled in the distance.

There were two cats. Actually, he explained, there were three or four. Elderly lady cat owners die and their cats are brought to the monastery to be looked after. The black one ran off into the building site — another dark corridor with 12th century frescoes.

And that was the end of the last day together. 43 days’ walking, more than 1000 km. Two countries and five Regions. What a journey!

Stats for the Day
Distance: 15.38km
Time: 3 hrs 42
Elevation: 528 metres

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