Well today was to be the day. For the last couple days as we crossed the plain a hill in the distance turned into a small mountain, Subasio, as we got closer. The kilometer long uphill main street of Spello was just the start of it. The route to Assisi goes up and right over the top. Now we were harbouring no illusions that we wanted to get to Assisi bad enough to put in that effort. The route is quoted as 18 km, but that involves over a thousand meters of elevation to climb and the same down the other side. The tour company, being reasonable, has found a shorter route that follows the contour lines around the edge of the mountain. Not much shorter, but not as much climbing. However it is a high contour line and only knocks off the upper 2 or 3 hundred meters or so, still leaving a 600 m climb. Our solution to that is to take a taxi to the start of the lower route. He drove upwards for 20 minutes, switchback after switchback, sometimes gearing down, passing through the cloud layer into sunshine. We were so happy not to climb that.
After getting oriented, and a bit of initial climb, the trail became fairly level and a lovely quiet forested path for 7 or 8 km. There was a certain amount of urgency, because thunder showers were predicted for noon.
The hitch, of course was that there was no taxi to take us down that last 300 m (vertical) into Assisi. It was a steep, stoney, muddy, leaf covered, slippery trail that required concentration for every step. It took us an hour and a half to cover that last 800 m slope safely. Luckily, the thunderstorms did not start until later in the afternoon, or I don’t know if we would have survived.
Assisi is, like Spello, built on the edge of the mountain, and, as life would have it, our hotel was at the far (lower) end, entailing another km of downhill after we reached the city.
We checked in but our room wasn’t ready, so we had to wait longer before we could hit the showers.
We had a final check out with the route manager, and had dinner in the hotel, since it was raining again. It has been a long very tiring day.
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