When we fired up this morning the forecast was for rain at noon, and the sky did not deny it. The first task was to climb to the castle at the peak of the hill so I could photograph the medieval aqueduct that supplied water to the castle and town. It is an impressive construction, and pretty much useless, strategically. An enemy could metaphorically “cut their water off” with no trouble. But it still supplies water to the city today. It is now blocked off for tourist traffic as a result of recent earthquakes in Italy.
The climb across town allowed us to take the half dozen escalator flights back down to start our walk. Initially the subsequent climb on the strata bianca (white gravel trail) up through the olive groves was interesting, but into the second hour of climbing we began to question the wisdom, at our age, of undertaking a hike in the hills of Italy. Why not Holland or Denmark? The climb was neverending, and hard on the knees. We encountered a gentleman out inspecting his olive trees, just now leafing out, and he had a handfull of wild asparagus. Never mind, not important, just keep climbing.
Part of the trail was an abandoned mountain railway, however the recent earthquakes have made the bridges and tunnels unsafe so we had to detour through even more olive groves.
There was a long downhill through a recently harvested pine grove to Eggi, where we weathered a significant rainstorm in a bus stop shelter while we unlost ourselves. The earlier part of the day had merely been sun showers of no consequence.
The several handred meter climb out of Eggi was through bush on a narrow trail to Bazzano, where we got lost again. Things are much more difficult here than on the Camino. The trails are rougher, there are more hills, and there is the constant need for navigation, as there is a decision to be made every few yards in the maze of streets and trails. No yellow arrows. The hand book is precise and accurate, but if you miss one clue, you are lost, and it takes a fair bit of concern to find yourself again.
The trail from Bazzano onwards was fairly level, but long. Vic had run out of physical resources earlier, and was obviously using up unknown resources from somewhere else.
We finally arrived at our destination, the town of Poreta, and the villa Borgo della Marotta in particular. It is a bit of an oasis. Apparently owned by an Italian Marquess (i.e., old Italian money) as part of a chain of these things. It is an acreage of buildings that form a hotel complex. We have a lovely room on the end of several. We were shown the complex of a couple living rooms, and the pool (closed) and the separate resturant. I think the resturant has pretentions. People must drive from miles around to get here – because there are, like, 12 people that live in this town. The main complex has two huge “living rooms”, one with a honour bar with wine at 7.5€ a bottle. Again, not Rome.
We had dinner at the resturant. Since this is the only place in town, the tour company has provided us with “ half board”, that is, breakfast and dinner. However, as is normal with all Italian meals, there are 4 or so courses available at 10€ a pop, and we wondered just how far the tour company’s largess went. The maitre d’ suggested he would rein us in if we went too far. Anyway, a very good meal and we had a good conversation with a convivial young Polish couple.
Muscles (joints actually) are very tired. It wasn’t the 20 some km, it was the long ups and downs.
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