Friday 16 May 2025 – Today was the penultimate day of the first chunk of our walk to Rome. This section ends in Siena, which we should, all other things being equal, reach tomorrow. Today, the target was Monteriggioni. Of the route, our S-cape app rhapsodised once more: “Prepare yourself for one of the most beautiful sections of the Via Francigena, a meditative route…”. “Meditative” could possibly mean “dull”, in that meditation is the best way to work through a boring stretch. Anyway, the route was not dull; but the S-cape app didn’t quite prepare us for the day’s walk with useful information.

Breakfast was only available from 8am, so we got there promptly. The food on offer was perfectly fine – standard Italian hotel breakfast fare, meaning yoghurt, cereals, juices, plentiful bread and pastries, cheese and meats, and a limited selection of fruit. But there was Twining’s finest Earl Grey on offer, which is always a good thing in our books.

We started off on basically the route that I had used to get the milk yesterday, which leads down That Ramp, past a good view over the newer parts of town.

When we got down to the bottom of the ramp, we found that a market had, it seemed, taken over the whole town.

There were stalls everywhere.

The route of the Via Francigena through the outskirts of the town was quite complicated. How those pilgrims managed not to lose their way round all those apartment blocks is a mystery to me because I suppose they didn’t have Google Maps to help them.

We left the town on the road, but soon diverted away from it and found ourselves on a woodland path with the sounds of rushing water to our left. Soon, the source of the sound became clear; the path ran beside the river Elsa.  It was, indeed, a delightful walk, past several attractive cascades

At times we had to cross the river, which The Powers That Be had enabled by rope bridges. Well, rope, anyway.

Some of these crossings were really very interesting – slippery stones (made more slippery by overnight rain) with quite substantial gaps between them – but we made it intact over all the crossings. We felt that some mention might have been made of these crossings in the S-cape app, to prepare us. Some of the bridges were a little less ambitious, mind.

We passed an intriguing memorial stone, which is getting quite overgrown.

The stone is in memoriam Vitalie Michitcin, and carries, translated into Italian, the immortal line penned by Isaac Asimov, the science (fact and) fiction writer, in his Foundation trilogy: “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent”. This made me wonder whether Vitalie’s end came about through domestic violence. I can’t find any references to explain it in more detail, I’m afraid.

The path was clear, albeit muddy and slippery in places, and every so often went steeply up and down, typically with steps chunky enough to put a strain on the knees of your correspondent.

There was a waterfall at the head of the series of cascades

although there was a bit of a torrent above it as the river passed under the road at Gracciano dell’Elsa, where we exited the Parca Fluvial and took up on an opportunity for a coffee stop.  We had only done about 6km, but the excitement level had been quite intense at times.

We left Gracciano on the road, but again soon turned off on to paths of varying quality. We passed an intriguing statue, possibly of a crane,

though it didn’t look robust enough actually to lift anything. We also passed what was once an ancient Etruscan thermal bath

which was allegedly downstream from a mill, but no sign could be seen of that.

Mostly, the path was OK, and the countryside very pleasant.

Every so often, though, it turned feral

and showed evidence that mountain bikers made use of it,

though, frankly, how they managed MTBs on some of the stretches is beyond me.

These were rocky, steep and slippery in places – another aspect that the rhapsodising S-cape app had failed to prepare us for.

One thing it had prepared us for was a viewpoint that gave us our first sight of Monteriggioni. And it’s quite an arresting sight.

Our walk today would not take us quite all the way there, but we shall walk through it tomorrow as we follow the Via Francigena. By this stage we had reached a small place called Abbadia a Isola, a curious little place, with some old buildings which used once to belong to an Abbey.

We looked into the church, which was simple

but which had some nice frescoes, some possibly reaching as far back as the 16th century.

It has to be said, though, that our main object of interest was a restaurant our information gave us to believe was on the site. Since the time was approaching 2pm by this stage, we decided we should lunch here if possible, as leaving it until we reached our hotel might be too late.

We stumbled around a bit and eventually found the restaurant. It’s called Futura, and it’s a bizarre sort of place. The food we had was delicious, but the decor is very strange, with weird modernistic pictures on the walls.

The service we had was very courteous and professional, but also somehow pretentious. Its website proclaims “Our Italian Cuisine of Tomorrow”, which definitely sounds pretentious to me. Jane and I don’t drink wine any more, preferring gin-and-tonic to go with meals, so I asked our friendly but po-faced host if he had gin. He said yes, so we asked for gin and tonics. Alas, he said, they had no tonic. One wonders what sort of thinking drives an organisation to be able to provide gin but not tonic. If that’s Italian Cuisine Of Tomorrow, I want no part of it. So, although the food really was very good, it didn’t count as a Nice Lunch, which is a bit of a shame.

All that remained of the day’s walk was to get to our hotel, Il Piccolo Castello, which is quite posh.

We discovered that, in taking lunch, we’d made a tactical error, as our arrangement for the hotel was half board. We certainly didn’t want dinner as well as the lunch we’d just eaten, so Jane negotiated with Bianca, the very helpful lady on reception, who got her boss to agree that we could take a picnic lunch with us tomorrow instead.

Since we were less than 2km from the very intriguiing-looking Monteriggioni, we thought it would be worth exploring. Bianca told us that a taxi would have to come from Siena and cost a fortune, but arranged for someone to take us there in the hotel minibus, which was very helpful of her. Accordingly, we were deposited just outside the walls and made our way in through the imposing gate.

Jane had worked out that Monteriggioni is quite small, but it’s actually tiny – it’s really just a fortress, not a town at all. Historically it occupies its undoubtedly strong strategic position as a defense against possible incurson from the dastardly Florentines, so its original purpose was purely military. When we walked in one side of the place, we could actually see right through to the other side.

It’s very photogenic, with an attractive main square with cafes and restaurants, and a lot of small artsanal gift shops.

The church is small but handsome

and quite plain inside.

It’s possible to walk on parts of the walls, which gives a bit of an overview of the place.

It’s really an open air museum, not a town or village. It’s lovely that it’s been so well preserved, but it somehow feels a bit odd. Anyway, we shall walk through it again tomorrow, once we have climbed the 90 or so metres up the path that leads to it.

This will be the start of a long day, as we will have over 20km to cover – and no coffee stops! As I wrote earlier, reaching Siena will mark the end of this section and we will sadly have to bid farewell to Caroline as she heads back to the UK after what has actually been quite a strenuous week – the route so far has been much tougher than any of us had anticipated.

Anyway, we have to get to Siena first. Wish us luck!