San Gimignano to Monteriggioni

San Gimignano to Colle Val d'Elsa 27 October

Italian parking rules: "Just put 'er anywhere." We still laugh when we see cars just sort of poked in towards the kerb. Or left running with no driver. "Mate, don't be so uptight, no probelmo, si?"

We thought we had said farewell to San Gimignano but it didn't work out that way. We first realise that it will haunt us for hours when, fifteen minutes outside the city gates, I see a woman filming us walking towards her, then pan to the horizon. I follow the camera and gasp at the sight. There it is perched on the top of the hill.

The woman is an artist from Milan, making video art, it's a good place to do it, plenty of material! We walk off and hear footsteps running, she is chasing after us to get our email address to send us some of the photos she has taken of us.

For most of the day, every time we crest a rise San Gimignano is still in sight, getting gradually smaller and smaller, its towers making it look weirdly like a tiny skyscraper city. 

It's a short day today, due to lack of accommodation options at a better distance. Quite a nice feeling to wake up with only 11 km to walk, leisurely start to the day, stroll off and start on the set of rolling hills that will take us to Colle Val d'Elsa. Perfect weather, cool and clear.

We've been off-road for a couple of hours when two jolly German men stop us for a long chat. They are on a group tour, where their luggage is taken from place to place, and they wander in between. Out little backpacks fascinate them and we end up having an enthusiastic philosophical discussion about life, material possessions, trekking, life, the universe...they are so full of joie de vivre that I almost expect them to break into a hearty German song.

In no time we are at Colle. We've (almost) spent more time taking photos than we have spent walking. The first sight of Colle is very uninspiring. Someone had told us it was a pretty little ridge top town, but it looked grimy, gritty and flat. What's going on? We find the tourist info place and aha, the pretty part is definitely ridge top, up......there. The Signora explains that it is very panoramic to walk up but very (she searches for the word, then puts her hand at a sharp angle) "Steep" we suggest. "Si, steep". So steep that there is a lift. But it is broken this week (of course!). We set off, but feel rather smug to be able to climb this supposedly impossibly steep slope quite easily.

The mediaeval town is a little strip of buildings, originally controlled by two families, one part each. Plus the Medicis, naturally. Their stamp, and their crest, is everywhere in this entire region.

I found a book in English in Venice, The Lives of the Artists Vol II, which I thought at first was bit stilted until I realised that it was written about 1500. The author, Georgio Vasari, was an artist and architect but became rich and famous by writing two books about artists who had been recently alive, and one, Michelangelo, who was still alive and with whom Georgio had worked.

We now keep finding buildings designed by Georgio, and mentions of him in information leaflets. It is ridiculously appealing to stand in front of a building designed by him, it feels very personal.

Apart from the normal gaggle of mediaeval buildings: a few merchants' houses, a couple of churches, a Medici palazzo or two, an arched bridge, Colle's only claim to fame is that it produces 15% of the world's crystal. So there are lots of shops with startling window displays.

When we go to dinner we almost need sunglasses. Last night the glasses we had were so scratched it looked at first glance as if they were grubby. Tonight they are Rosenthal, very fine and as clear as ....

We had looked for somewhere to eat, and go back to a place that looked nice. It is pretty funny. We open the door and there is a rock behind it to stop it swinging open. So our first words, thinking we have knocked something over are, "Scusi". The owner rushes forward, bends down to pick the rock up, explains profusely that everything was fine, the rock is there on purpose. (He must have to do that for every diner.) He then shows us to a table and puts the menus down.

Three seconds later La Signora is beside us with her notepad. We send her off. Thirty seconds later the Signor is there. R puts his hand on his heart and looks plaintively at him, "I'm sorry, I just need a minute to look".

We order, get our simple meal (we only have one course, which the Italians must find very strange), and while we eat the Signor roams the empty dining room, staring out the door, circling back, asking if everything was ok, bounding back to look out the door again. But the room is warm, the food is good and those glasses are something special.

What do we eat? R has lamb chops cooked in red wine and rosemary, with a sprig of rosemary on the plate, I have minestrone soup.

There's a school group on exchange with the local high school staying at the hotel (whatever happened to billeting?) and the place is full of teenagers, sitting on the stairs, dashing in and out of rooms. We thought we would have to chuck them off the computer when we got back from dinner but they have now disappeared.

So another lovely day draws to a close. Tomorrow Monteriggioni, it looks like something really special, if you're into ancient walled towns. But it is funny how you start to take things like "built in 1200" for granted after a while.

Colle Val d’Elsa to Monteriggioni 28 October

No, stop, don’t read another word until you’ve Googled Monteriggioni…

Ok, back with me now? Can you understand what All the fuss is about? We walked for a few hours, looking for it, knowing it would just pop up and be instantly recognizable. Every hill has a fort, a farmhouse, but no, no, no, then we walk over the crest of a hill and, Oh my, it stops us in our tracks.

We start the day by getting a lift from the hotel owner to take us out through the lower part of Colle with its busy scary roads. He drops us right where the Via heads off into farmland and forest. In the far distance there are snow-capped mountains – it’s lucky we crossed the alps when we did, there must have been some heavy snowfalls right behind us, and it is true it is getting colder, we’re racing South ahead of the vicious chill of winter.

We’re walking along and are whisked back to Spain, a big grove of Holm Oaks. We saw these beautiful lush rounded oak forests in one part of the Camino and we are surprised to come across them again here until it dawns on us that it is probably about the same latitude.

We spend most of the day on forest paths, stepping carefully over rough white stones and boulders when suddenly we stop, poke at them and exclaim, “That’s marble!” Need a bit of polishing, but then, call in Michelangelo, let him have a crack at them, see what he comes up with.

Now we are, as you will undoubtedly recall, following the ancient route of Sigeric, appointed archbishop of Canterbury in 990 who walked to Rome to get his official stole from the Pope (couldn’t he have had it posted to him?).

Well Sigeric walked back again and documented his journey, and presumably that of a pretty hefty retinue, valets, advanced party, cloak carriers and so on. That’s how it became one of the three big pilgrimage routes in the middle ages. In our guidebook the places he wrote about (I can picture a little scribe with robes and a tonsured head scratching away with a quill on parchment by the light of a tallow candle) are shown and today we come to one of them.

The Abbey of Isola was a stopping place for pilgrims for hundreds of years, but it all started with Sigeric stopping off for the night there, and it gives me a shiver to think that his feet had walked in through the gate on this exact spot.

But enough of that, we need lunch and for that we have to get to Monteriggioni.  Up a steep path, through the gate and into the town.  It’s very cute, but there isn’t much of it, just big enough to hold a garrison and the people to feed and house them.  It is very picturesque, shame about the people in the shops and cafes. They are so very off-hand. Is it inbreeding, or lack of manners or too many rude tourists, or just too many tourists that has shut off their smile reflex? Something has. But it is a pity, because seeing the photos of it before the tourist trade, falling down and impoverished, you would think they would be oh so grateful for the river of gold that flows through there day after day.

We walk past the nice looking little hotel and ask about somewhere to stay, hoping for a cheaper night and are directed to the pilgrim hostel, special rate for pilgrims with a credencial, the pilgrim passport we get stamped every day. Monteriggioni looks up, it is pretty basic, bunk beds, but a room on our own and a wonderfully nice and helpful woman doing a few days volunteering there to take care of us.

We have probably the worst shower yet, in a strong field. The water is freezing, then after a long time it spits out a dollop of boiling water, just enough to trick you into soaping up and lathering your hair, then back to freezing again, while it heats up another little bucketful. We get clean and adjust our attitude.

Then we walk out to walk the walls, the only attraction here.  It is free to pilgrims with a credencial. Yippee, we save a whole 3 euros, but it feels like a win. We do the circuit with the jaunty air of people with more right to be there than just your ordinary tourist.

Having done that, we sit in the square and there is nothing else to do in this teeny tiny place, so we go in to the hostel and get ready for dinner. Delfina, the volunteer, has offered dinner cooked by her (the price is a donation) and it seems like a good option. We have a good family style meal, around the kitchen table with Delfina and another pilgrim, Alain a Frenchman, who used to run factories in Poland and is now doing the Via in sections, two weeks at a time. 

Delfina has done the Camino as well, twice, once on foot and once on pushbike, and has just spent two weeks cycling through East Africa, so we had lots to talk about.  I asked the question that has puzzled me for weeks. Why is it that French people do so well on their diet. Alain says, “We eat exactly the opposite of what they say we should but yes, somehow it works for us.” Delfina chips in, “In Italy we are slim because we eat a lot of pasta. It’s the pasta.” R says, “Maybe the problem is not the food. People are fat in England, America and Australia. Maybe it is speaking English!.”