Arrividerci Roma

24.11.10 – 28.11.10

It’s everywhere in Rome. L’Amore. Couples kissing in every corner and archway. Maybe it is the result of all the flesh on display in marble, everywhere. The ancient Romans mostly laid a tasteful thin layer of cloth across the gentle undulations of the human form, or a fig leaf, but truly, it got completely out of hand later and it’s all there is 3D. And they are all so perfectly slim, trim, perky, or cut. Talk about abs! You were never going to get immortalised if you were too keen on dessert.

We have a feast of all that, and all the art you could poke a paintbrush at, today. It is Villa Borghese day, the massive park with a stately pile in the centre and several other generous sized buildings scattered around the grounds, all now owned by the state.

Scipione, the Pope’s nephew (and, flaunting something I just learned, did you know that nepotism comes from the word for nephew because the Pope traditionally gave the equivalent role of Secretary of State to his nephew). Where was I? Oh yes, the Pope’s nephew was put in charge of his collection and he got all the guys on to painting, sculpting and generally making the Villa Borghese and its collection an outstanding place for us to pop along and fill in a lazy half day in 2010. Thanks, mate, excellent.

It’s in a huge park that must be a real oasis in the heat of summer, but, oh, the building and its statues and paintings! Enough said. We’ve learned a lot about Raphael and there are plenty to see here, including his self-portraits and the statue of David with Raphael’s own face. And with a slingshot. He could have sorted out some of those damned dogs we met along the way. The Bernini statues, oh so exquisite, so fine, how on earth do you carve marble so that you can see the press of fingers in flesh? And there is a delightful statue of Pauline Borghese, Napoleon’s sister, I can’t remember by whom, reclining on a divan. Oops, careless girl, she’s mislaid her top.

I follow this high culture with a haircut. There is a hairdresser opposite our apartment and I take pot luck. What fun, he comes from a career in the movies, is married to a Danish woman and had Queen Margarethe as a client, among many other famous people. Now in later life he just wants to enjoy quiet life as a solo hair artiste. Jacques Fontaine, and the photos on the walls all tell a story about someone or other. It should have taken an hour or so but I’m there for two hours as he leans on his comb and we rabbit on.

Then as evening falls we wander down to the Trevi Fountain again and stand transfixed by it lit at night. I stand there staring at it and thinking, “ I don’t know if I can go home and not see this again.” Nothing like being a tourist to give you a good appetite, though, and it’s pasta time. We’re eating our cannelloni, a stooped old man comes in and plays a lute, then goes between the tables collecting tips. The staff is chatting, the girl on the cash register is singing to herself, it’s getting late. Another lovely day in Rome. I really like this city.



Next day we’re off to the Pantheon. It sounds like it’s worth a look, but the real drawcard is that Raphael’s tomb is in there and I just have to see it. What’s this, a piazza we passed on our first day and liked, but now we know what we’re looking at and that just has to be a Bernini fountain, two actually. We consult the guidebook. Yes! That was one busy boy, and handy with a hatchet and a block of stone. Three laps around the square, stopping every two metres to exclaim some more, and another bookfull of photos, and we head for the Pantheon. Raphael’s tomb, and it’s beautiful inscription, I can’t recall the exact wording but it was along the lines of “When he lived, Nature was afraid that he would outdo her, and when he died, she was afraid everything would die with him. “ I had a moment, one of the highlights, pass a tissue.

Then out again, have I mentioned that the weather has been a bit iffy? Apparently there has been no rain for 6 months, it was all saved up for our week in Rome. So we walk out into the square outside the Pantheon; it is getting set for a major Bolsena and there is a freezing wind whipping up. We take the easy way out and scuttle back to our warm dry apartment.



R is on strike. He will not step into another church. I remind him that half the art in Italy is to be found right on the walls inside churches. It makes no difference, he has reached the plimsoll line and the sight of another altar is going to sink the ship. So I say, “No problem, you go and find a bar, but there are just a couple of churches I need to visit while we’re here. “ No, he’ll come with me just to keep me company and wait outside. But it’s no good, the first one, Santa Maria Maggiore has Bernini’s tomb inside, I have to see that, and he can’t resist either. Then the next, St Peter in Chains, has the Michelangelo Moses, so there we are both inside with the camera going. (St Peter in Chains is named that because, get ready, there are the actual chains that bound St Peter as a relic in a glass case.)

The Princess Eudoxia was given them by her Empress mother who received them from the hand of the Bishop of Jerusalem himself, so they are obviously the real deal, and very dramatic they look, draped tastefully and well lit for the faithful. And Eudoxia built the church especially to house them. Actually there is another church that goes one better, having the actual heads of both St Peter and St Paul in silver boxes. Another has the finger of St Thomas, and there are enough bits of the true cross here and there to build a house. However after St Peter in Chains I can see that we have finished with churches.

I have, however, not quite seen enough of the crew of painters who I have come to feel quite attached to, meeting them all along the way. They did get around, these boys. Something very fascinating has struck me. I bought an historical novel about the Wars of the Roses in England and realised with a start that it was the same time, roughly speaking, as all of these new favourite artists. So I did a chronology of them and cross- referenced them with the battles of the Wars of the Roses. I clearly have too much time on my hands and need to come home and get back to work.



Just a couple of Palazzos before I do… I did want to see how the rich and famous lived, not turned into a gallery, but sort of how they lived in real life. And I strike gold in the final place we visit in Rome, a palace with the family rooms on display, Palazzo Doria Pamphili. The family portraits are on on the walls, the furniture is in the rooms, and there is a massive collection of personally collected and owned art on every square centimetre of wall, but, most interesting of all, it is a palazzo where the family still lives. It is gorgeous, lush, magnificent, beautiful. The audio guide is narrated by the son of the current Princess, welcoming us to his home, and explaining that in the early 1800s the first English wife married into the family, several more have followed and the family is all educated in England and speaks more English in the family than Italian. (I wonder if he says that in the Italian version). But the portrait of that first English wife, Mary Talbot, is on the wall, and the guide explains that (get your hanky ready) when she died, her husband, devastated by grief, retired to his country villa and had a box hedge planted that was trimmed to say her name; it was placed so that it was the first thing he saw in the morning every day when he looked out of his window.

I can’t tear myself away, even looking at the highlights in each room has taken a couple of hours. R leaves for a while, comes back, then fainting with hunger and gallery fatigue, suggests that we have given it a good crack and it’s time for lunch.

Good suggestion. After all, Italy is as much about food as art. We have done well with both over the last two months. Italy is a great country, with a fabulous legacy of beauty from its artists, and with sensational scenery. It seems like a long time since we stepped out onto the road at Besancon and started to put one foot in front of another, walking through three countries on our way to Rome. Now it’s time to leave.

Living in Rome 21 - 23.11.10

21.11.10

The last time we saw the Colisseum it still had gladiators racing around it. Well, not quite, but it was a really long time ago. Funny, it still looks just the same except that it now has squillions of tourists racing around it. We hadn’t thought to go early to get a ticket to get in, maybe there were not even tickets needed last time, but we decide to join a guided tour to avoid an hour’s wait in a queue. There’s not much for a guide to say about it really: it’s very very big, it held 80,000 people, they used to have all sorts of unpleasant sports in there, ending with the death of animals and people and they also used to fill the floor with water and have mock naval battles.

They did, however, provide it all free, along with food, to keep the populace happy. Considering how much money tourists pour into the Roman economy every year in hotels, restaurants, taxis, souvenirs, I reckon they should just let everyone in for free now.

It was our day to tick off the Colisseum, the Roman Forum, the Palatine Hill and the Circus Maximus on our must-see list, and they were all worth a look. The one that really got to us (and there were only about 6 tourists there) was the Circus Maximus because it was actually built by the Etruscans and held 350,000 spectators for the big Charlton Heston chariot racing events. 350,000 people! Huge!

Talking of big and free events, the city of Rome did actually turn on something both big and free yesterday. All of the museums in the city were open in the evening (and when I say all the museums, in Rome that means an incredible number) plus the university and lots of the palazzos, for free hour-long concerts. Every kind of music you could imagine: fancy a New Orleans jazz band? Go to the Accademia Belgica.. Some Flamenco? Try the Casa delle Letterature. Folk music? Spanish? Blues? Any kind of classical you could imagine? Something like 40 concerts at once. Dazzled by the choice we opt for baroque music with 2 sopranos and a bass, partly because it is close and partly because it is baroque music and is in the Museo Nationale Romano Crypta Balbi, which sounds interesting. When we get there, after wandering up and down the street for half an hour, we enter a museum that has no sign at all outside and is something really different. It is a history museum, certainly, but of one city block. A whole museum just for one block. That’s Rome for you, way too much history.

The musicians file in, we are all standing on the walkway above one of the exhibits, a few big chunks of pillars, and they start to do their thing. Pretty little madrigals float up to us, accompanied by a man playing those unlikely-looking old stringed instruments, lutes with long necks, or strangely bent. It was very entertaining, and when it finished we wandered around looking at the exhibits. Another bit of pottery, rusty spoons, that sort of thing. We don’t stay long, seen it all before.


22.11.10

So we’re sitting in the trattoria right next door to our apartment. (We are pretty well placed, a trattoria is next door and directly opposite is the internet café and a hairdresser). Anyway, the restaurant is full of people and the guitarist is wandering from table to table, singing all the usual suspects: Santa Lucia, Volare, O Sole Mio. Everyone is clapping, singing along, laughing.

Today is a big day. We saw Pompeii! Why is it so big (apart from Pompeii’s story, of course)? Because the last time we tried , in 1971, it was closed (of course!) But not today. We figured if we went with a group it would be sure to be open. Once bitten, twice shy, we won’t risk just rocking up again.

So we book into a bus tour for the day. This is very weird for us, we have never done it before, we always laugh at those groups of people wandering around tourist spots like little flocks of sheep, but here we are , at 7 am getting onto a coach to drive 3 hours for a quick look at Naples and a slightly longer look at Pompeii.

We eye off the other passengers as they get on. There is a plump boy from Brisbane with a big camera and a bag of sweets. There is a brisk grey-haired woman from Canada and a genial man from Brazil. A bunch of tubby middle-aged Portuguese women get on, it seems like 100 from the noise they make, but it’s really only 6. They talk without pausing for breath for the entire day. What can they possibly think of to say for so long? There are two petite little gals of no fixed age from the deep South in the USA, with identical face-lifts. Several querulous yanks complaining sotto voce about almost everything. And us, settled back to watch the world go by at 100 km an hour.

Mt Vesuvius across the Bay of Naples

How amazing is Pompeii! What a vivid sense of the city in full swing; the remains of the houses, still with mosaic floors and painted walls, giving a clear picture of comfortable middle-class life in 79 A.D.

Beware of the Dog Mosaic

The wine and oil shops, the bakery which still had 80 loaves of bread in the oven, the theatre with seating for 3,000 and the baths, both with inscriptions from the city councillors who paid for repairs after an earthquake. The message between the lines: we paid for this, vote for us. There is a lot of giggling and chuckling about the brothel with its little rooms with stone divans and built-in pillows, the explicit paintings still on the walls.

Then there are the extremely poignant figures, just a few are on display. One of the early archaeologists made plaster casts of some of the figures he found; the ash had covered them, and set, then the bodies and bones had disappeared leaving the shape. So these poor people are preserved in the moment of death, crouched down with their hands over their faces against the ash and cinders, or lying, felled as they ran. A dog twisted in its death throes. It is very moving. This was a bustling, thriving city of 25,000 people captured forever in one cataclysmic event.

23.11.10

So we’re sitting in the trattoria this evening. Sounds like last night doesn’t it! We’ve just ordered dinner and we are surrounded by people eating and chatting. Suddenly the whole place erupts in shrieks. We jump, startled. Then we realise that a football game is on the two little plasma screens. It’s Roma vs a Dutch team and a goal has made it 2:1 to the Dutch. There is utter drama in the restaurant. All the staff are glued to the screen along with most of the diners. Even the chef is leaning through the hatch between the kitchen and the dining room. The cashier is running his hands through his hair in despair.

We hope the chef will be able to cope. We need to eat, it’s been a big day. We did the Sistine Chapel. Well actually Michelangelo and his band of genius mates did the Sistine Chapel. But we gave it our best effort and, yes, it’s worth all the fuss. Every inch of every wall and the ceiling is covered with fabulous art. This is not unusual in Italy, there’s acres of it in every building in every city, but this is utterly stunning.

Panel in Sistine Chapel
Just to do the end wall behind the altar took Michelangelo 6 years. Of course, it’s a biggish sort of wall and he did 300 figures on it. Judgment Day, people rising from the grave, being swept up to the sky. Jesus on a cloud sending them either to heaven or, look at those poor devils (so to speak) down to hell.

And then the ceiling with the oh, so famous image of…sorry, another yell just went up, another goal, this time to Roma. The decibels reach pain level around us. Roma has won the game 3 to 2! Someone is thumping a table and shouting. The cashier looks exhausted and has tears in his eyes. Now , where was I? Oh yes, God breathing life into Adam, figures almost touching, in the middle of the ceiling. Panels all along the sides by the foremost painters of the day. All different, all fabulous. We looked and looked, went out, came back for another long gaze. I needed to check the faces on the Judgment Day wall again.

But there’s much more to the Vatican, so much that part of it is now called the Vatican Museum. Before tourism took off, who saw all this stuff? Just the Pope and his pals? Hundreds of rooms crammed with antiquities, artefacts, art.

Section of Fresco in Rafael Room

And every wall, every ceiling, every pillar and post painted by painters famous for their brilliance. It’s dazzling, stunning, overwhelming. What is not any of these are the 54 rooms of modern religious art, which is unremittingly ugly and it is irritating to have to walk past it after being immersed in such extremes of beauty. What were they thinking to hang this stuff on the wall? We get through that, look for the one thing we haven’t yet managed to connect with anywhere, the Etruscan exhibits, but that section is closed (of course!). We have a coffee and walk home along the river, heads reeling.

In Rome 20.11.10

20.11.10 In Rome

Next morning we front up at St Peter’s again, bright and early, to get our gold star. We say the priest’s name, Don Bruno Vercessi, and are directed through to the Sacristy, past the Swiss guards in their gaudy mediaeval uniforms and into a little office.

After a long wait (I don’t think anyone hurries in the Vatican from what I have observed already of the cardinals walking steadily and calmly across the square with a red skull cap and a briefcase) we are issued with a visitor pass. This is the magic I.D. that, along with Don Bruno’s name seems to open every door. We are waved through, barriers are shifted to let us pass, doors are opened. As we walk across from the office, we are challenged several times, but just to point to the pass clipped to our shirts fixes that.

We are ushered into a hallway where an elderly monk is waiting for us. He welcomes us genially, warmly, slowly. We sit at a table while he chats, asks us about our journey, inspects every stamp in our credencial. No hurry, all the time in the world. He brings out the book and very slowly fills in our details and invites us to write a comment about our pilgrimage.

He then invites us to come back after midday and he will take us down to St Peter’s Chapel, down below the church. Hey, private tour of somewhere special, why not? We come back, as requested, the staff are all saying midday prayers and we can’t get through the corridor, but Catholic prayers don’t take long and we walk through to wait for the Don. He appears again and leads us through the back corridors and down into the depths. There are strings of little chapels covered in old frescoes. Finally we reach our destination.

It is very fancy, lots of gold, very grand but on a small scale, only about 2 metres wide and about 5 long. .


We admire it appropriately while the don stand by, beaming. It seems very important to him to tell that a bit of early Greek graffiti was found on the old original wall “Peter was here.” That confounds those pesky Protestants who say that Peter never went to Rome.

After we have spent a bit of time here, Don Bruno sits us down, says the Lord’s Prayer and launches into a little sermon. He is so sincere, if perhaps a tiny bit, um, elderly.

Then he focuses on me and moves onto St Peter on the role of women in marriage, quotes the bit about how wives should be submissive. He looks expectantly at me. It is all I can do to restrain myself, but what’s the point of making a fuss, after all we are sitting deep in the building at the heart of the Catholic church. Anyway, we might not be able to find our way out. But I imagine St Peter at the pearly gates saying to Don Bruno, “You were very conscientious, most of what you did was good, but that stuff you used to go on about wives and submission, that was bit off.” “But it was in your Epistle.” “Mate, what I wrote was all ahead of its time, but you were 2000 years later, you needed to update a bit.”

The Don finally lays his hand on our heads and blesses us and we escape. But it was a rare opportunity to go somewhere in the cathedral where tourists can’t go and see the workings behind the scenes. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

We give back our passes, head out and turn into tourists. We have decided to just live in Rome for a week, so we move to a serviced apartment and settle in. Buy some food, relax, nurse our feet, leisurely explore the ruins. About those ruins, why would you have stuff in museums when you trip over bits of it every two steps around Rome? But we start doing the rounds, in a laid back, we live in Rome sort of way.

The weather, of course, continues to be very unpredictable. Or, rather, you can predict that it will rain and then change to blue skies every hour. Since Bolsena we have coined a new term for torrential downpours. We look out the window and say to each other, better put on the waterproofs, it Bolsena-ing.

And because it is Bolsena-ing in a big way, we go to do an inside thing, visit the Palazzo Barberini. Now, I don’t know how the early Pope’s got elected, but they all seem to have come from the very wealthy families, and there was a Barberini Pope who, like so many of them, fostered artists and sculptors and lived in fabulous palaces. The Barberini shack is stunning, with a staircase to make your knees go weak (and not from the number of stairs). Want a nice staircase, with some excellent use of light and sculpture and the lines and angles a picture in themselves? Call in Bernini, and while he’s at it, get him to knock up a couple of fountains on the street corners near the house.

I won’t bore you with reciting all of the fabulous artists whose paintings are in the Palazzo Barberini, but my personal favourite was a portrait by Rafael of his girlfriend, the baker’s daughter with the cheeky smile, La Fornarina.

In the evening we go to a concert of favourite opera arias, in the American Episcopal church. We sit in the front row. I could not possibly have imagined what would happen at the end. Lovely singing etc etc, then suddenly one of the tenors darts over pulls me out of my seat and waltzes me around in front of 1000 people. My only fear was that I would tread on his dainty toes with my, yes, my clodhopper walking boots. Phew, managed not to. Then when they took their applause, he got me up to take a bow with them, kissed my hand and took me to my seat. I loved it!

La Storta to Rome 17.11.10

17.11.10 La Storta to Rome

Triumphant entry to Rome!

At breakfast at the convent there is another guest, a shy and very pale faced boy who could have stepped off the page of any mediaeval bible; get him into a brown cassock with a rope around his waist, re-style his hair with a tonsure and put a little edge of vine leaves and he’s that monk making the first letter on the page.

We step out of the oasis of the convent garden and onto the road. Bam, it’s peak hour, trucks and cars everywhere. People lined up waiting for buses to go to work. Real life is rather shocking, we’re not used to it.

But there’s nothing for it but to walk that horrid stretch of road. Nothing is going to stop us walking into St Peter’s. We stride out, let’s get it done. I‘m still lame, hobbling along, or I would be if my pride let me, and I would crawl there on hands and knees rather than resort to a bus for the final moment of the journey.

We stop for a coffee and an old man with a snappy, yappy dog at the next table stares and stares. Then he says, “Just 10 km to go”. We are pretty practiced now at the humble but proud look and say our little piece, that we are “pellegrini Australiani, a piedi de la Francia a Roma”. We have said it so many times now, and it always gets a great reaction. He beams, “Complimenti! Complimenti!”

We walk down the Via Cassia, I wonder who Cassia was, I must check her out, we have such a long relationship with her now. There is a minor road, the Cassia Vecchia, that looks a little bit longer but we take it and immediately it is quieter, more residential, with gardens.

We stop to buy some bread rolls when we find a shop near the city and suddenly see gypsies again. They are in all the big tourist towns and we haven’t seen them since Siena. The young girls look like proper storybook gypsies with long swaying skirts and long plaits. They are begging or scamming. The old women have scarves and coats and kneel motionless on the footpath with a hand out, holding a plastic cup with a coin in it. They are all filthy. Where are they from? Is it Albania or Romania, and is this the only life for them? It is very disturbing and unsettling. We are out of the quiet country life and into a big city again.

But ahead of us is the river, and when we reach it we turn to walk along it towards the Vatican. There is a quiet walkway and cycleway along the water’s edge; it is a much nicer entry to Rome than we had expected.

We are walking slowly along, taking our time, looking all around. Suddenly in the distance the dome of St Peter’s shows on the skyline.

There is a long road leading straight to our destination. We walk under an arch and we are in St Peter’s Square.

It is magnificent, huge. It is also filled with grey plastic chairs and barricades and thronged with people. Apparently the Pope had an audience today and it sure draws a crowd. We go to find the Sacristy where we can get our Testimonium, the certificate that is issued to pilgrims who have the credencial, the little document stamped every day along the way, evidence of having done the pilgrimage.

First we have to go through security check, after a long wait in line we go through. Into St Peter’s, gasp, amazing building, but we are focussed on our certificates. But the monk who issues them is finished for the day (of course!) and won’t be back till 9 tomorrow.

The official on the door goes away and checks, but he confirms that it’s not possible today. But he keeps looking at us, and then he says, “I saw you, on the road, twice, once at Viterbo and once at Monterosi.” He keeps saying “capella” – hat, and miming striding along with trekking poles. He must have noticed our Akubras as we walked along the road. We are pretty surprised by this coincidence, here he is on the door of the Sacristy office in St Peter’s . No testimonium happening here today, though, so we turn and leave.

I refuse to look at anything in St Peter’s until we have found our hotel and got our backpacks off, so we head straight out again. We see the other place where it is possible to get the testimonium, issued by the city, so we go there and, without any fuss, there it is, nicely stamped and signed. We set off for the hotel.

Rome is so, so cool! We are not. We walk along the streets leading to the hotel past people dressed beautifully; the jackets, the boots, the handbags, the hair, all ultra elegant and cosmopolitan. “I wish I wasn’t carrying my backpack, “ I say. “It’s gonna take more than that,” he replies. How true.

We are like little kids at a grown-up party looking at the shops as we walk, there is Gucci and Pucci, there is Fendi, Ferragamo and Furla. Streets and streets of it, everywhere we look there is another top-end boutique crammed with dazzling things.

For two months now we have lived so simply, away from even the most basic necessities more often than not. We have saved a serviette from the table to mop our brow as we walk, put a couple of slices of bread and cheese in our pocket at breakfast because it might be all we can get during the day, fill an empty coke bottle with leftover wine at dinner to take with us in the backpack. What to do without? Everything, pretty much. What little luxuries? A book. What’s for lunch? A bread roll, an apple. And every night the rituals: I wash the socks and if there is a big enough heater, a shirt as well. We unpack our few belongings, R puts the phone, the GPS and the camera on to charge. We walk out to see the exit from town the next morning. It’s such a simple life.

Now we are here and we will ease back into reality. But we made it! We walked, one step at a time, and we're here.

Capranica to Campagnana de Roma 15.11.10

15.11.10 Capranica to Campagnana de Roma

I had warned R that leaving Capranica would be a photofest. The hard harsh history of the daily life of Italy away from the big cities is clearly laid out. The poverty, the crowding, the daily drudgery and tedium of living in these mean streets.

More recently so many towns in Italy took a hammering during the second world war, and there was no work, no hope, hunger and despair. No wonder so many people took the chance to emigrate to somewhere offering more opportunity in life. Even now I think about the teenagers and young adults I see, nothing to do, silent streets. Is it different to life for kids in Australia in the suburbs? Maybe not, but it seems very dreary, little knots of them sitting in the cold outside the pizzeria, the café.

We strike out for Monterosi, straight up a long hill. Suddenly R realises he doesn’t have the guidebook. It must have fallen out of his pocket. He runs back down the hill, finds it and comes back up. We have form in this – in Spain we were climbing a long hill early on, before we were fit, and I saw a sunglasses lens on the ground. “Some poor bloke has lost that, “I thought, as I stepped delicately over it. At the top of the hill R says, “Oh no, I’ve lost a lens.” I realise what has happened and tell him. He sighs and runs back down to get it. Same today. So far, so good, but it comes back to haunt us later.

Nice scenery, threatening weather, contradictory Via signs. We plod on. 5km out is Sutri, on a strategic spot at the confluence of two rivers. It was an Etruscan stronghold, then Roman, then Christian. There is a Roman amphitheatre. I stand and think about the poor bastards waiting in the wings to be sent out to fight a lion. There is only one ending to that story, for the gladiator.

Roman amphitheatre at Sutri

The site also has an Etruscan necropolis, tombs cut into the volcanic rock cliff. How old is that ? What were their lives like? About the same as ours, probably, eat. Sleep, work, raise families.

We reach Monterosi, our destination. There is only one lead for a place to stay. We can’t find it, but – here’s the funny part – neither can any of the locals we ask. Not a clue where the hotel is, the street is, no idea. One person suggests we could walk a couple of km and see if we find it. I look down the road. 2 km is out into the countryside, great suggestion. It’s a drab little town anyway. I pull the pin, find out when the bus goes to Campagnana de Roma and, an hour later, here we are.

But the guidebook, determined to escape, must have fallen out of R’s pocket as we got out of the bus and it is now on its way to Rome. We stand on the footpath absorbing the thought. I am quietly confident that I will be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for not saying anything at that moment. Fortunately there are only two days to Rome, so we will find a way. How to go cross country without a map? We head for the place we want to stay, discover it is 4 km away and stop for help at a tourist office that appears magically in our path.

A helpful Signora gives us a map, writes a list of turns to get onto the off-road Via route and finds a hotel in town for us. I feel like leaping over the counter to throw my arms around her.

We find the hotel, musing on this life question and we drag up several flights of stairs: why is it that the nmore tired you are the higher your room is? The view is nice, of course, as long as you don’t give up on the last landing and just lie down and die. We settle in, head down for dinner in the little restaurant. It’s just us. The pardon sits stolidly in the corner watching the television, turned up loud to the inevitable game show, while we eat. I wouldn’t want to open up for just us either. In the book I read about the couple who went to live in Tuscany I read about feasts for lunch, five courses, that go on till the last person falls unconscious. That sounds like fun, but it’s not the meals we are having. Firstly we upset the proper order of things, we want my soup, his meat, my salad, all at once. And we order so little, one course each, two at most, once in a blue moon a sweet. What’s the point of having a restaurant if you have customers like us?

In 2 days we will walk into St Peter’s.

16.11.2010 Campagnano de Roma to La Storta

Those Romans sure worked hard! They ruled Western Europe and, trust me, it’s a long way from end to end when it’s all done on foot. The administration, money, power, bureaucracy is incredible to consider. They built monuments, temples, aqueducts. But the most amazing thing is those roads. You bump into them all over the place in the old Roman Empire, no matter how remote. Straight as an arrow, flat and firm. You’ll be walking along a straight path and you’ll look down and there it will be. Lots of them have been quarried for building, but astounding stretches are still there, 2500 years later. Cars drive on them!

The Romans used massive amounts of effort, three layers of carefully prepared road bed, then smooth stones trimmed and fitted together to form that flat surface. Originally they were edged with a rim of stones with a gravel track down the side for horses. It is awe-inspiring to walk on them and I had a Sigeric moment too, one day, knowing that my feet were definitely treading the exact surfaces he did, 1000 years ago.

We follow the Signora’s instructions in the morning and it gets us out of town, then a car pulls up in the middle of the road and a man directs us 50 metres up the road, where we find the track. All day I am thinking that this might be the last forest walk, the last soft path. It’s raining on and off, but the mist is pretty and the track is very picturesque.

We follow the map and the Via signs all day and it finally drops us off out of the forest and onto a busy crossroads. The next Via arrow is ambiguous and the map is useless. WE try one way, then the other. No more signs. Lots of traffic. The noise is shocking after the silence of the forest paths. WE ask at the service station. “No idea”. We go onto the most obvious road then back off – it’s way too dangerous, no footpath and huge trucks flying through. I say something, R stops, I stumble and bump into him and half fall over. You can see where this is leading. What follows is a brief but insightful discussion of each others’ personality and character.

We walk off in two different directions then circle back and sit down on a bench at the service station to draw up the peace agreement. It’s Yalta all over again except that we can’t divvy up any territories, not having any to start with, and currently carrying everything we own on our backs.

I take the map and decide to try another tack. Maybe one of these stupid (we really need the aid of German here, dumkopf is such a useful word) attendants can at least tell us exactly where we are on the map. I approach one, noticing, not for the first time, that servos here seem to be run by Indians, the same as in Australia. The guy point, “Ask him, he speaks good English.” I look over and see a young Italian bloke on the phone servicing a vending machine.

I wait, he smiles, finishes his conversation. Yes, he speaks good English, his mother is South African. It’s only a couple of km from our destination but he doesn’t know how to find the Via. We look at that scary road again. R says Is there a taxi? “I will drive you if you like,” he says. We give it a nanosecond’s thought. “Yes!”

We pile into Mario’s little car and he drives us to La Storta. It’s no distance, but he then helps us find somewhere to stay. We have an address for a convent and a hotel. We find the convent and go in. Mario comes in with us, arranges with the two sisters standing in the foyer with the two very smartly dressed lay ladies who are the day and evening cooks.

Mario is laughing, talking, smiling. He charms the socks off the nuns, well their HomyPeds anyway. Then he kisses me and R on both cheeks, holds the nuns hands in his, has a group photo taken, and breezes out. Everyone is smiling.

We have had some wonderful moments where people’s unexpected kindness has made a big difference and this was one of them. We won’t forget Mario.

The nuns are lovely too. Little cheery sisters, all in white. “My sister lives in Blacktown!” Everyone loves Australia. Ah Bella Bella! Their eyes light up. Sidenee! It is a delightful thing to come from such a popular country. People almost clap their hands with admiration. Young people talk of coming, how to get there, how to get work. Their yearning to visit, to emigrate, is palpable. I fell as if I have won something, somehow almost unfairly, being born there, so easy. Then I remember how my ancestors braved danger and distance to make this happen. 100 years ago Lord Baden Powell said “Just by being British you have already won the lottery of life.” Of course that was when the Empire was still in full swing and Britain ruled half the world. Now it is my turn to feel lucky. Lucky to live in a country not powerful or influential in world affairs but just so good at everything, so fair and so clever.

OK that’s The Philosophy Hour over.

Our room has two little twin beds opening on to a balcony overlooking a garden. Elderly Italian sisters wander slowly along the paths, leaning on their canes. Brisk dark skinned nuns dart energetically along. Clearly the next generation of the church comes from Africa and India.

We walk down the road on our ongoing quest for the way on to the Via tomorrow. We stop for a coffee and the Romanian barman calls in a distinguished looking man to help us. His English is perfect, he is the professor of Horticulture at Viterbo University. But you are French Monsieur I exclaim as his English has a French accent. Ah no, I’m Italian but I am from Milan in the North so I sound French. He tells us that there is no off road Via anymore, it is all busy roads to Rome. 15 km to go.

Vetralla to Capranica 18.11.2010

18.11.10 Vetralla to Capranica

Forest path

You learn to expect the unexpected when you’re doing this sort of thing, but when you’ve finished reading today, tell me if it isn’t a pretty extreme example.

We set off in nice sunny and warm weather. There’s no breakfast at the B&B so we stop for a coffee and croissant in a little bar. One of the few times someone has tried to rip us off, the owner gives the wrong change. R holds his hand out and the guy just gives a shrug, opens the till and hands over the other 10 euro note. We narrow our eyes and give him a stare, that’s about all we can do. It’s hard to say “thieving mongrel” when you don’t know the words for “thieving” or “mongrel”.

But a few steps later we are on a pretty path and spend the rest of the day off road. Orchards of hazelnuts, chestnuts. A trail through the forest, slender trees with feathery yellow leaves.

It’s Saturday so the cyclists are out in force, and we come across a big group of children riding along the path with a couple of adults. Their little piping voices sound like a flock of birds. The autumn leaves are thick on the ground and they crunch and rustle as we walk. There are signs on the trees telling hunters what days they are permitted to go after wild boar.

We pass an old apple tree with apples covering the ground around it. We try one cautiously but it is crisp and delicious, so we put another one in our pocket for later. At lunchtime we stop in an orchard. We find a couple of old chairs near a hut. Mine is a sturdy little stool, but R’s has a cane seat which makes alarming little snapping sounds and finally gives way just as he stands up to leave.

We come to a village with only one person in sight, an old man leaning over to the ancient water fountain in the middle of the square filling up a pile of bottles.

All day it is pretty and peaceful. And very quiet. After a few hours we cross the Via Cassia, we have met this road a few times now. It’s heading straight for Rome, less than an hour away by car, but we just cross it and strike off again across the fields away from the sounds of civilisation.

We don’t know where we will stay in Capranica and it looks very dreary as we walk in. There are ugly, dilapidated modern flats for about a km. We look ahead to the old town but when we walk in through the arch our hearts sink. It is old, definitely. It is also shabby, crumbling, drab. We walk along the empty Sunday street looking for a B&B, a hotel. No signs, nothing that we can see. Lots of the buildings look vacant, shops empty and shut, and For Sale signs dotted around.

Capranica

We consult the list of possibilities with growing anxiety. Maybe tonight is the night we will finally have to sleep on a park bench. There is a convent somewhere, maybe we can find that and try our luck. We glance up, we are standing next to a sign with an arrow to the convent’s address! “Maybe it’s a sign”, I say. Yes, it’s definitely a sign, screwed to the wall.

We follow the sign, up a flight of stairs and knock on a door. It opens, there is an elegant white-haired woman on the phone. Slim, dressed simply in black skirt and top. Classy nun! Very different to the general run of dumpy, pudding-faced sisters we see traipsing around cathedrals all over Italy. “Oh,” she says to the person she is speaking to on the phone, “there are two pilgrims at the door.” She hangs up, ushers us in. We explain we are looking for somewhere to stay. Does she have a room, or is there a B&B or a hotel in town?

She hesitates, then asks us for how many nights. “One.” She leads us upstairs and then we enter a little Kafka moment. It is not a convent, it is her home, her bedroom. She explains that we can stay there. I suppose that she is going to sleep downstairs.

She strips the bed and she and I make it together with clean sheets, chatting in Fritalian, a unique blend of French and Italian (sounds like a brand of potato crisps, really, doesn’t it). Her jumper is on the chair, her personal photos on the bedside table, her dressing gown behind the bathroom door, even her knickers drying on the rail.

R offers her 50 euros, but she refuses firmly, so that seems to clarify that it is not in fact a B&B. Despite it being so unlikely we gradually become convinced that she is indeed offering to let us stay there while she is away for the night. She is going to Rome, taking her old dog with her and will be back tomorrow. She shows us the cupboard with the tea and biscuits for breakfast, gives us the key, tells us to leave it in the letterbox when we leave. We go out for a walk.

When we return , she and the dog have gone and we in possession of her house and all her things. We tentatively make ourselves at home, hoping we haven’t made some sort of mistake. The house is very pretty, full of artwork. It is a little bit bohemian, a little bit herbal tea. “Are you an artist?” I had asked her. “No, but my late husband was a great artist.” Not sure if that means successful , the house isn’t a palace, but it is interesting, artistic, individual. There are pictures stacked against the walls here and there, all modern art. A couple of his paintings are on the wall, one of them looks vaguely familiar. Matteo Guasco, must look him up, I think. We put a cd on, make some tea. R catches me looking longingly at the fireplace with the basket of wood. “Forget it,” he says, “we won’t be lighting a fire.” He’s right , of course, accidentally burning the place down would be a bit embarrassing.

We go out to check out our exact route out of town for tomorrow, as usual. The town is transformed, fascinating. Tourism has passed Capranica by and its untouched buildings, arches, stairways, alleys, softly highlighted by pools of golden light from wrought iron streetlamps, could truly have been 500 years ago. One old man with a limp hobbles slowly down the road, a young couple hang over a rail. Otherwise it is deserted. It is fantastically atmospheric.



We walk back stopping to peer into shadowed courtyards until we reach the restaurant where we had planned to have dinner. Disaster, it is closed! We hunt for another, it is locked tight. We walk into the bar opposite to ask and the barman points to the man standing beside us. He beckons for us to follow and leads us….into the place we had intended to eat. He is the owner, just opening up a bit late.

He sits us down, the Signora starts to cook. Their young son is doing his homework. The young couple come in and take another table, the Signor’s daughter and a bunch of her friends arrive, noisily settling at a big table. The boy comes over, and shyly practices his English. “My name is Giacomo. I am twelve years old. What is your favourite team?” Lovely!

We take a little wander up the lane as we go back to the house and realise our mistake. The signs to the convent actually lead to the end of the alley where it opens into a tiny piazza with the convent tucked in just out of sight. But we go to sleep for the night alone in the house of a complete stranger. Amazing!

Viterbo to Vetralla 13.11.2010

Viterbo to Vetralla 13.11.10

100km to go!

Pope's palace at Viterbo



Better people would laugh this off says R . By then it's OK really. We're sitting in Vetralla, were out of the rain, we're eating pizze, we have somewhere to stay. At several points during the day none of these seemed likely.

Viterbo was OK, the usual tangle of old buildings, but laid out gracefully becauseit was the Pope's base at one time when the Papacy lost control of Rome. The palace in Fiasco hadbeen his summer residence high on a hill 20km away.

But Viterbo has a cathedral, what seems like dozens of churches and a grand palace all dominating the town. The pope who built it must have been jigging the day of the lesson in the seminary about vows of poverty.

We walk out, take a couple of photos and hey presto, under the arch and across the road we are in a country lane. So far so good. Very pretty, very quiet, except for the Saturday trail bike and push bike riders decked out in dashing gear and calling out cheery greetings as they fly past.

The trail is nice, the weather is lovely. The Via wanders beside olive groves and ancient moss covered walls. Then, what the...it stops. The farmer has ploughed everything within view. We stagger across the ploughed ground, those big clods of earth threatening to turn an ankle at every step. If there is a hell says R I hope that *** farmer goes to it.

It's very hard to pick the trail when there is no trail. Then we stumble on an Etruscan tomb, aha, that's mentioned in the guide and we are back on the page. I don't begrudge them making a litle glass hut over that tomb and locking it up, but instead of using old fashioned opaque wired glass, maybe it could have been clear? So we could see what's inside? Would that have been too hard? We're climbing up the next hill when R taps a piece of broken tile sticking out of the ground near his foot. Etruscan relic he says. It is indeed very old, a piece of history, bathroom reno circa 1970.

A tiresome day follows. We get lost several times. We spend along time wandering through an enormous farm of olives and kiwi fruit with junk lying everywhere trying to find our way. I catch my foot in blackberry bush and yank it out with a howl just in time to save myself from falling head first down a steep slope full of brambles. Finally after going around in circles we find the farmer's wife and she givs us vague direction.

Part of the day was ona path beside the motorway, rubbish-strewn and noisy. Part of it was on a country path stinking of piggery run off, witha Chinook helicopter hovering overhead.

We stop for a break, feelng exhausted and dismayed. After a bit we realise we are actually lying in an olive grove, eating bread and cheese, drinking local red wine, dozin in the sun o a hot dry day. Hmm. Not too bad actually. Pretty good, really.

We walk up a long hill into Vetralla, missingal the pretty bits, if there are any, just ugly blocks of flats. The town is bigger than we expect and it is hard to see where the centre might be. A man walks across the road and I ask him for directions. Across the main road and up the other side we find the piazz, but it's a daggy place. Where to stay? We have discovered that where we had intended to spend the night is 4 km further on and in the wrong direction, that won't do.

There is a B and B just here but we can't raise the owner by phone. We sit on a stone step and consider our options. We ask some teenagers. Hotel? No. Taxi? No. We ask in the haberdashery shop next door, where can we stay? La Signora, bless her, springs into action and goes to all sorts of trouble to locate the B&B owner. Success! In one minute they will be here!

One Italian minute, that is. We setle back on our step. After a while a car pulls up and out gets..the man we had asked directions of an hour ago. We all exclaim about the coincidenta. We have a room, we are sitting across the road in a little pizzeria devouring a family size pizze each. Tomorrow is another day. Five walking days to Rome. We passed the 100km mark today, it felt very significant after coming so far. Zoe said, It's just a long last 5, of a half marathon, a marathon, a pilgrimage. Five to go to reach our destination.

Siena to Buonconvento

Siena

At last, I’ve heard someone say “Mumma Mia!” Not in a cartoon, or a musical, but just say it like…for real.

We are standing at the tourist office in Siena, and the very helpful man has made yet another phone call to try to find us somewhere to stay, but “Mumma Mia” there’s no room at the inn.

We walked into Siena deciding that we would lash out a bit, but if we were going to grace a place with our presence it had to come up to our full wishlist: can walk around the bed, good water pressure, really hot water, can turn around in the shower recess, wool blankets, soft pillows, in the centre of the old town, access to a computer.

We had briskly rejected the first room we were shown as we walked into town, a tiny stinking room with filthy carpet. Then there was no availability at all at the next two hotels we checked out so, puzzled, we headed to the Tourist Information Office.

Aha, it is Halloween tomorrow night and a big public holiday on Monday, All Saints Day. Like Thanksgiving, and Chinese New Year, this is the big one here, and all Italy is on the move. November 1 is the day everyone visits the family graves in the cemetery, so they all go home, or if not, they have a long weekend away.

Siena is packed, but not with tourists. It’s Italians wall to wall and the atmosphere is great. The problem is, all the hotels are full. After the helpful man has rung five with no luck, our wishlist has shrunk to, “Does it have a roof?”.

We are offered the last room in a place just a few steps outside the mediaeval town wall. We sigh, head there prepared to be stoical and undemanding and…step into a little charmer.  We’re thrilled, a hotel with so much character, pretty, individual,  and our room even has a mezzanine. We can’t believe our luck. It reminds us of one of our most favourite places in Spain, Costa Vella, a little family run hotel in Santiago de Compostella.

It has hot showers, wool blankets, oh, who cares about the rest of the list. We explore the place, there is a gravelled garden out the back, an ancient well with a pot of herbs and a terracotta cherub perched on top, a view out to the hills.  R says he’d like to stay forever.

Now here’s the thing about Siena. It is without a doubt one of the prettiest towns in the world, the mediaeval walled part, that is, which is an absolute masterpiece.

Like some other places we’ve seen, it has been preserved because of circumstances that would have been rather unfortunate at the time. The plague hit it and killed half the population, which stopped progress in its tracks, and then , no I won ‘t spoil it…

We walk up the flagged street and in through the huge gate with the big (guess whose) crest on it. Yep it’s those Medicis again.  Now this is puzzling because Siena and Florence were enemies, so why is there a Medici crest here? Because they won, that’s why, and annexed Siena, and whacked their crest all over it. Of course, you can understand it, if you were called, let’s say, Lorenzo the Magnificent, you’d think a few crests were de rigeur.  When it was taken over by Florence it was at first intentionally suppressed. Then the Medicis (during their 300 years of rule) got into their building, arts, sciences, painting, sculpture kick here, just as they did everywhere they were in control.  So it was more and more beautified during that time.

There are lovely buildings everywhere, but what makes you gasp and stare is the Campo, the huge shell-shaped piazza, with the palazzo and the tower, famous from every book on Italy. It’s the pearl, it’s one of the postcard memories I have of Italy from all those years ago. It is just stunning.

It’s getting dark, we sit at a restaurant with a clear view of the circle of graceful, elegant buildings and just drink it in. Finally we wander home, eating a gelato.

It buckets down with rain during the night. The next stage is 30 km, we can’t see how we can break it, and it is a daunting thought to contemplate walking in torrential rain for a very long hard day. So we make a snap decision to stay here for another day, let the weather have a chance to settle, and just enjoy Siena.

We do a few tourist things:

• Check out the museum, recognizing some of my new friends from The Lives of the Artists
• Climb the tower to look at the amazing view, after waiting in a queue for 45 minutes.
• Visit the cathedral with   a) an altar by Michelangelo    b) an altar painting by Bellini   c) a library of a local boy who became pope   d) a stained glass window by the stained glass guy Buoninsegna and 5 Sibyllas in tiles in the floors  e)coloured tiled pictures in the floors by Niccola Pisano  f)a façade by Niccolo’s son Giovanni
• Visit the crypt with frescoes only discovered in 2001

We think we now have had enough culture for one day, it’s still raining and we are hungry. So home, a bite of lunch, and the perfect way to spend a wet afternoon, a siesta.

When it’s Italian time to out to dinner we wander up the street, thronged with children in witches hats and masks and sit down to eat in a little trattoria in a back street. After scanning the menu we pass on the Warm Spleen Sauce, the Toasted Bread and Lard, the Sienese Tripe, even the Pieces of Stewed Wild Boar. We opt for spaghetti and soup. But R just can’t resist the Cooked Whipped Cream with Fruits of Wood for dessert.

Siena to Lucignano D'Arbia 1 November

If you're going to lay some paving, or a stone floor, and you want it to last, say about 800 years, you'd want to do it once and do it right. The Campo is in 9 sections and they've been having the famous horse races there for that long, as well as hordes of people tramping over it for centuries and it looks pretty damn intact. And a floor I saw today in a palazzo simply stopped me in my tracks, so to speak. Smooth, shiny, still perfect after all this time. La la la, I reckon Simon and Garfunkel could do something with that.

We trot around Siena all morning, filling up with culture despite the weather until, coming out of a museum into the Campo and seeing the rain coming down in sheets we decide that we have done everything in Siena that needs to be done and we retreat back into our warm dry hotel.

The Museo Civico had been a treat, though. There were two frescoes so different from anything we have seen. Both were painted in about 1330. One shows a horseman between a couple of castles, but what's special about it is that it is the first ever painting of a naturalistic landscape. I think it's worth about 5 out of 10 on the naturalistic scale but I guess he gets extra marks for thinking up the idea.

Then in the next room, on two walls facing each other, something else never done before. I wonder what the thought process for that is? You're lying in the bath watching your rubber duckie float around and suddenly you get a flash of inspiration..."How about I don't paint another Annunciation pic, sooo bored with them, how about I try something new, could I get away with it? What the hell ('scuse me) I'll do it."

It wasn't quite like that actually (rubber duckies hadn't been invented yet, baths either, really). There were 9 councillors in Siena (and because of that the Campo is set out in 9 sections) and they decided to break the mold. They asked for a pair of paintings  representing the effects of good government and the effects of bad government (to reflect what on them, I wonder...).

But the painting on good government shows, for the first time ever, a secular scene, with people dancing, buying shoes, farming, leading loaded donkeys, building houses. And (I loved this) it shows the exact spot on which our little hotel now stands, just outside the city gate and leading down the hill.

The city with the bad government has met a bad end, and with a lot of the fresco falling off the wall, serves it right, just a few creatures with horns and people in dire straits to make its point.

I think that's enough culture, don't you? Tomorrow we'll stir our lazy backsides and hit the road again, but (sigh) it really does look like this wet weather is setting in. R treats himself to a cigar and we stand in the garden looking at the lights.

Siena to Lucignana d'Arbia 2 November

"Too Pollyanna", says R, reading the instalment I had written yesterday during dinner, "All good news, nothing bad". So I say, "But all the interesting stuff is awful while it's happening, but I'll work in some tired feet or something." Now, I reckon a conversation like that is just asking for it, don't you?

The morning starts well, a bit overcast, but not raining, and as we walk out the sky clears and blue starts to spread all over, with little puffy picturebook clouds. We walked into Siena (who does that?) and we walk out again. Exit through the bookshop. Our hotel is on the Via Roma and just through the Porta Romana, so we reckon we are definitely on the right track. But the Via sign is right beside our hotel and it leads us away from the busy road and straight into countryside. All those rolling hills, dotted with farmhouses and hardly any traffic. It gets quieter and quieter. (In the distance there is a freeway cutting across the landscape and R takes a photo, just to remind us that it's not all picture perfect all the time.) Actually the Frenchman Alain was fascinated by the factories. I always tip my hat down to avoid looking at them when we have to pass one, but, "I am a man from manufacturing", he says and loves to look at them.

He did pose a very interesting question, though. Why are the Medici towers square? It is cheaper to make a round tower of the same height and strength, so why did they choose to make them square. Flaunting their wealth and power, or some other reason? Note to self, ask Andreas, he'll be sure to know.

We walk and walk, it's going to be a long day, even though we have found a place to stay to break the stage. There is a bit of confusion with some of the waymarkers. Actually, it's pretty funny, apparently there is quite a bit of politics and feeling between the two main Italian Via groups, and one of the results is that there are either two waymarkers or none. Like, if yours is up, we have to make our mark too. It's not very saintly! But I guess the history is there, Siena and Florence were at each others' throats for centuries, while at the same time spending a fortune on churches and religious art. The Guelphs and the Ghibellines, Siena backed one, Florence backed the other, the Pope was involved too and they spent hundreds of years, fighting, besieging, plundering. I can't remember which one backed which, and, strangely, those names sound more Dutch than Italian to me. But I digress...

We sit beside the road in the sun, the ground is wet and everything is steaming in the sunshine and have our first little picnic of the day. The countryside is lovely, golden autumn trees everywhere. It looks rather like lots of the folds in the hills around Bathurst in Autumn.  

But somehow we miss a turn, and we don't realise it for a long time, although we are looking at the map and at the gps quizzically from time to time like a pig looking at an armchair. It is becoming clear that all is not well, but the road is a nice quiet backcountry road, hardly any traffic, rising and falling enough to be interesting and very pretty all around. We are sort of heading in the right direction, so we assume that we will meet up with the route sooner or later as it emerges from a track. But we gradually get more and more pessimistic, and the sky is getting darker all the time, with definite signs of rain in the distance and occasional warning shots onto us.

When we reach Radi we have to accept that we have stuffed up. We are several km away from where we want to be, it doesn't sound like much but after walking 20km or so already it is, "Oh darn it" or words to that effect. We are lost, not lost like someone will find our bleached bones one day, but lost like, how to find our way back to where we want to go without walking half the night. So we stop for another little picnic and then change direction, onto a busier road, deciding to see if we can hitch a ride. The first couple of cars whizz by, and R says ,"We might as well accept that we will have to walk it." Around a corner, another car approaches, it's far too dangerous to stop there, no-one would, but, after all, this is Italy, who knows. I stick my thumb up, the car screeches to a halt, perched in the middle of the road, in the middle of a tight corner. We bundle in, the driver is a Professor of Medicine at the University in Siena, he is going near where we want to go.

Up the little hill and into our hotel.

Lucignano d’Arbia to Buonconvento 3 November

It rains a little bit on and off all night, the day dawns bright and blue sky, but the damage is already done.

We set off, perfect weather, hot even, and lovely scenery. The road leads out of pretty little Lucignano d’Arbia and after a brief tricky passage on the wrong side of the Armco, suspended on the steep side of a field, but out of reach of the trucks thundering by in both directions, we find our way down a little path and into the quiet of the countryside.

The track might be fine in summer, baked hard, but with last night’s rain it is slick and slippery. On one side a ploughed field, on the other a railway line. We skate and slide, then as the track gets lower and the grey clay gets wetter, we struggle along, our boots gathering mud until they are covered with a thick clog of mud.

I look at the field, and try it. No, that’s a mistake, I sink even deeper into that soft wet earth, back to the path which stretches out far ahead. “It’s going to be a long 2 kilometres,” says R.

Maybe we will be stranded like a hippopotamus in an African drought, up to our knees in mud and not able to take a step. I’m laughing to myself, thinking of a helicopter sent to rescue us, lifting us up. Our boots pull out of the mud with a sucking sound. The pilot says, “No way, they’re not getting into my helicopter with those boots.”  So we hang on the cables until we are deposited in a carwash and we get the pressure hoses onto it.

I look thoughtfully at the railway line. It looks rusty and disused but I don’t dare try it. For a while I amuse myself imagining walking along the tracks, a train comes suddenly, I don’t have time to get off, I’m knocked over, my feet are cut off, at least I’m free of these boots, but I bleed to death there. It’s very entertaining.  Suddenly a train comes flying past as I watch, startled.

After dragging myself along for an eternity, the track rises a little, there’s a shard of rock and a tuft of grass to step on, then it dries out enough to make it possible to walk, or trudge rather, dragging the weight of my boots along.

After about an hour the track rises, there’s gravel, a little bridge over the railway line. I find the perfect boot scraper, one of life’s little pleasures, a bit of broken pot with a long side and a pointy end. I haven’t seen R for a while and I watch him come into sight.

When he reaches the rise, he says, “Wow, that was tough. I ended up walking on the railway line. It was going well until the train came along.” I check him for missing feet and blood. Neither, all seems in order.

We stop for a little snack and then walk on to the next village. There are sheep all through these parts (that’s rural speak, did you like it?). They are picturesque of course, but the interesting thing is that the flocks all seem to be in the sole care of sheepdogs. They are large white dogs who blend in perfectly and suddenly detach themselves to bark at us enthusiastically as we go by.

Now we have noticed something all along the way in Italy. No-one disciplines their dogs. They bark, no-one takes any notice. They hurl themselves at the fence, there’s never a shout of, “Settle down”. And yesterday one that was not on a chain or behind a fence actually went for us, fangs flashing, with its owner watching impassively, showing mild amusement. R beat it back with his trekking pole and it retreated. They do seem to understand a stick. After joking with each other about catapults we have actually seen them for sale once or twice, so tempting.

Now, another mystery. When does all the building get done?  Everywhere there is scaffolding, and signs of activity, but the only time you see any actual work on these sites is early in the morning, when occasionally you can spot someone throwing a rope up. Then…nothing. Of course, you have to have siesta, mate. And after that it’s hardly worth starting, it’ll get dark too soon. Or it’s Saturday afternoon, or Sunday, or it’s wet, or hot, or… In a country full of fabulous and magnificent buildings, how on earth did they get built?

We arrive in Buonconvento early in the afternoon, take a stroll, looking at the so familiar town walls and gates with the Medici style. Buonconvento had the dual good luck in times gone by to be at the confluence of two rivers and on the route of the Via, so it prospered, but this also made it vulnerable to attack, hence the walls, which still seem to contain most of the town. It’s easy to imagine it in times gone by.

I’m immensely diverted by the fact that the hotel tonight is the Hotel Ghibellino. So easily amused. I check with the receptionist. Were the Ghibellines with Siena or Florence? She is visibly shocked…Siena, Signora!

Bolsena to Viterbo

Lake Bolsena

10.11.2010 Bolsena

“That was surreal, “ says R, leaning out of the window. It has been three days straight out of the 1950s. We have pretty much had the Hotel Royal to ourselves – one night there were two other people there, the other two nights there was one other couple, in the huge old-fashioned resort hotel.

I have rested my foot by lounging around in the salon, reading. It is a real period piece. There are lamps and side tables and persian rugs. There is a soundtrack playing softly all the time, sort of Perry Como favourites, with a little bit of Elvis and Frank Sinatra. And, most hilarious of all, some books in English, just a few: a couple of thrillers, some vicarage romances with heroines named Joyce and Sheila and (I'm honestly not making this up) a Nevil Shute hardback novel.

It could be a film set. If Viven Leigh was to jump out of a vintage sports car and come running in, bumping into Marcello Mastroianni in the foyer, it just wouldn't have surprised me. It would come out in a few months called “Italian Escapade”.

It was all very restful, and rather like having a mansion and staff. Buon Giorno Signora. Full breakfast buffet laid out just for madam and sir. Coffee in the salon? Is there anything else you would like? The weather was perfect for my purposes, wild squalls of rain, lashing wind. Great weather to be on the couch. R went out one day to do some sightseeing, and came back drenched to the skin and very miserable, but I just stayed put, going to look out the window every now and again at the wild scenes on the lake.

We ventured out to dinner one night. Ah Tuscany, hillsides bathed in sunlight. Lazy afternoons eating pears and persimmons warm from the tree. We laugh about the picture as we scuttle back in the icy driving rain, through deserted streets and past shops shut and shuttered for the winter.

But after having lazed around, slept, stared out the window for long periods and read two books, I have given my foot every chance to get better and it is time to get going.

11.11.2010 Bolsena to Montefiascone

Any place that has fiasco as part of its name has my attention.

We follow the lake around, and over a few hills. It is very pretty. The lake has two private islands in it which catch the eye, and the hills all around are wreathed in mist. People have been interested in what we are doing all the way along this journey, but now they say “Give my regards to Il Papa.” We don't expect to be sent an invite to meet him, actually, but we say Si Si just the same.

It's a lovely walk most of the way, until we reach the outskirts of Fiasco as we have taken to calling it.The streets leading into the town are standard issue ugly, nasty blocks of flats, rubbish- strewn vacant blocks, traffic.We trudge up the hill (they sure did love putting these towns on hills)and find our little hotel just outside the city gate.

When we go to have a look around, it is getting very cold, the streets are empty. Fiasco has not had the tourist trade and the loving care that lots of other places have. Its claim to fame is its huge dome on the big church at the top of the hill – second in size only to the dome of St Peter's in Rome, so they say. But the town is all very run-down, grey , grim and quiet. Where are all the people? Sitting in front of the heater, I guess, smart move.

We go to dinner in the only place we can find that is open, it is quite nice, with cheerful murals on the wall, but we are the only people eating. We scuttle back to our hotel and spend the evening moving our socks around on heaters up and down the hall outside out room as they go on and off, to get them dry.

Bella Italia. Well, it is, but not tonight.

12.11.2010 Montefiascone to Viterbo.

Looking back to Montefiascone

We can see Viterbo from our hotel window, across a wide plain, a big town, which is likely to have a lot of traffic and a busy entry.

The farmland is flat, we are just walking across the valley floor to get to Viterbo, and it is scruffy, daggy farmland. The lush rolling hills of Tuscany seem to have fallen away, and it is just Hoxton Park as far as the eye can see. Not quite, actually in the distance there are hills, and pretty soon we will be able to see the hills of Rome, it is getting very close now.

But for now we just have to get through this dreary market garden coutnryside. We do come across one surprising thing – some thermal ponds, steaming hot and smelling of sulphur, just out in some fields. They have been concreted into ugly little pools with broken orange piping.

There is a ring of campervans circling them, with terry robes hanging from the trees around about. Lolling about in the pools is a pod of whales, sorry, large Italian ladies and men of retirement age. I take off my boots and sit with my feet in one of the pools. Nowhere to change into swimmers so more than that was impossible. In fact, no facilities at all, just these ugly tacky little pools as if someone had made a set of amateur concrete fishponds in their backyard and never really got around to finishing them, let alone landscaping around them.

All that is left of the day is to get to Viterbo. The route is across country, so we don't strike traffic until we are almost in the town, the first sign is a massive cemetery, then a few blocks of dreary offices and shops, then through the mediaeval gate and into a spacious old town. This was the base for the Pope for a long time, when the papacy lost control of Rome, so there is a fine set of grand buildings right at the top of the hill and parks, piazzas with fountains, lots of churches and very graceful towers.