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Day 11 – Castiglione d’Orcia (almost) to Radicofani – Ford Focus

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Saturday 24 May 2025 – We knew that the day was likely to be a longish and toughish one, as the overall distance was going to be over 20km, but not as tough as it might be – despite the total lack of coffee stops. We were also aware that there were three fords to cross, a couple of which could be problemmatical after heavy rain. However, the weather has been dry, and so we hoped these wouldn’t present a problem; but there’s always the tinge of doubt in the back of the mind.

The “official” stage end should be Radicofani, which is at the end of a climb which the S-cape app describes as “challenging”. We, however, will stop short at an Agriturismo; tomorrow morning they will give us a lift into Radicofani, I’m glad to say.  All the above means that the elevation profile we had to deal with went as far as the chap in this pic.

This left us with a walk of about 21km and a climb towards the end of over 300m.

We bade goodbye to our room, which (as Jane discovered yesterday) has a great view of the Rocca fortress,

and headed down to breakfast, which was served in the restaurant linked to the B&B, the same place we’d had lunch yesterday, and was served from 8am – a bit later than we’d like, but never mind. It was a slightly rudimentary breakfast, and so we were on our way before 8.30. We passed the Pieve, of Santi Stefano and Degna, which was open, so we looked in.

Stained glass, presumably of the church’s two eponymous saints

Inside was the friendliest church cat

which was happy to meet both of us, and sat, possibly mournfully, watching us as we departed.

To get back to the offical Via Francigena, which doesn’t pass through Castiglione, we headed (steeply) back down the way we had (steeply) come up into Castiglione the day before. We made things slightly tougher than necessary by missing a turn and having to pant back up to it, but eventually joined the Via and got under way. In the extreme distance, we could see the tower of Radicofani’s fortess, which itself is quite a lot higher than the town.

Looking back, we had a great view of Castiglione in the morning sunshine.

The scenery was great, as one would expect on a sunny morning and viewed from altitude

and in the distance we could see Radicofani – just about.

For a long while we were on a dirt road, and this led us to another slip in navigation. The Via departed from the dirt road, but the signposting was very poor – practically invisible from the direction we were walking. Luckily, Jane noticed that we’d once again passed our turning, and we hastened back to get on the right track. It led past scenery of which one could say, in one’s Chandler Bing voice, “could it be any more Tuscan?”

At around halfway through the walk, we came to the first ford

which, as expected but still somehow to our relief, was not at all difficult to cross. Shortly after, there’s an abandoned hospital, Le Briccole (where St. Francis of Assisi is rumoured to have stayed at one point) and the chapel of San Pellegrino,

which we’d hoped might provide somewhere to sit in the shade for a bite to eat. Sadly not, but we benefited shortly after from the beneficence of Gruppo Trekking Senese, the Siena Trekking Group, who placed a picnic table along the track.

This provided a welcome rest stop, where we shared a banana and actually ate one of the Mule Bars which I’d carefully bought to fuel us for our Camino Francés a couple of years back, but which, until now, had remained uneaten. Thus fortified, we walked on, past a second

and a third ford.

Since there has been no rain of any pith or moment recently, these were easy to cross, but one could see that the third one could be quite dangerous if a flood were running through it.

The track became grassy

to the point where once again we sometimes found ourselves wading through waist-high grass. I was pleased to get a photo of an Old World Swallowtail butterfly

and we were generally well-serenaded by the wildlife as we walked along. Sometimes it was the frogs, but we also heard larks, blackbirds, blackcaps, swallows (or swifts) and, delightfully, nightingales. Over the kilometres, we’ve had a great selection of birdsong, including golden orioles and bee eaters, but I’m particularly pleased that we’ve heard nightingales in so many places along our walk.

The fortress tower of Radicofani was often visible in the distance, and sometimes the road even seemed to be leading us that way.

We passed a couple of places where sheep were being farmed; almost all the farming we’d seen so far was arable, so sheep were rare.

Our track led beside a river, the Torrente Formone.

Its name seemed a bit optimistic, but one could also see that it could be quite a sight in the rainy season. I was beginning to flag quite seriously at this point, and it seemed that Gruppo Trekking Senese had my number, as we passed another of their excellently-positioned picnic tables

(a crap view of the main road, but a very welcome rest point).

It seemed to me, in my weary state, that our destination was receding as we walked. Our destination was some 4km short of Radicofani, and seemed that we always had 4km more to go.

We forded the Formone (again being grateful that there hadn’t been heavy rain)

and started the long pull up to our accommodation, an Agriturismo establishment called La Selvella. Wearily, I took a photo of what I hoped might be it

but it wasn’t; it was much further on and much higher. Of course.

That establishment, though was very much agri but not turismo. We passed it, watched by (I assume) the farm cat

and later on (and yes, higher up) saw the sheep that they were farming.

Some of them had been saddle-sheared, leaving a patch of fleece on their backs; we’re not sure why. Anyway, it was their lunchtime and so they all ran off to collect their food when it was brought up.

Courtesy of the ICCE, we got an update on our journey;

only 147km to go, now!  I felt it was shame that the ones we were covering at that particular time were so emphatically uphill. The temperature wasn’t hot – maybe only 20°C – but we were in the direct sun all the time, and I was finding it hard going. I had to stop and take photos of the scenery now and then to give myself a bit of a rest.

Eventually, though, we got to our accommodation, whose gates were

closed, of course. Jane got on the blower to one of the numbers listed and they opened the gates and let us in.

We were checked in by the very friendly Max, who showed us (and, to our relief, carried our bags) to our room, which is all very nice – large, seemingly comfortable and equipped with the things that make our lives good: extra pillows for the bed, a bidet for Jane’s feet and a kettle for some of Twining’s finest Earl Grey. Dinner was not until 8pm, and so there was nothing for it but to relax (I indulged in the first bath I’ve had since 2002) after our fairly heavy day.

Tomorrow, as I say, we get a lift into Radicofani, for which I’m exceedingly grateful – the last 4km into the town are even harder than the last pull we had up to La Selvella. Then we head for Aquapendente, but things are a bit complicated, as one section of the trail runs along a major road and we have to phone someone to be driven along it, as it’s too dangerous to walk. So we probably only have about 20km to walk and most of them are downhill (but we can’t see any coffee stops). Who knows how this will work out? Not us – but we will report back to let you know.

 

Day 10 – San Quirico d’Orcia to Castiglione d’Orcia – short but sharp

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Friday 23 May 2025 – Despite the short distance we had to walk today – 10km is the official distance – we still found ourselves up and ready to depart by 8am. I had looked at the profile of the walk offered by the S-cape app

and formed the opinion that it should be really quite easy, with only gentle ups and downs.

Wrongly, as it turned out. I should instead have looked at the representation offered by Garmin Connect for the same track,

which gives a far better impression of what the day will bring.

Anyhoo…

The breakfast arrangements for our B&B took the form of a voucher to be used at L’Officina del Gusto (The Office of Taste), which had interesting decor

but a limited selection of breakfasts: sweet or savoury. As we continued on our route, the weather looked a trifle ominous

and the various weather apps suggested that there was a real possibility of rain.  However, none materialised and the morning was cooler than we’d experienced before on this walk. We soon left the tarmac for a dirt road, with the usual offering of great scenery.

As we walked along, Jane and I agreed that the Via Francigena was better than the Camino Francés for scenery, but the Camino offered much better infrastructure, particularly rest stops. I guess if you want the scenery, you have to be prepared to walk up the hills.

We passed a few frog ponds,

which were all as noisy as the first one we’d seen a couple of days ago. It struck me that you don’t get that kind of racket in frog ponds in the UK, but I’m not an expert in country ways. Jane, however, has roots in the countryside and she agreed that frogs in the UK weren’t that noisy. Perhaps it’s because these are Italian frogs? We’ve noticed that Italians in groups and silence are to a large extent mutually exclusive.*

A large lump hove into view,

giving us the opportunity to disagree on exactly what it was. Jane thought it might be Radicofani, and I thought it might be Ripa d’Orcia. We were both well wrong, but we did find out eventually what it was. (That’s the bait to keep you reading, which is a bit pathetic, really, but this is the level to which I’ve sunk.)

We knew that there were a couple of interesting stops on the way, and we soon saw the first,

the roofs (rooves?) of Vignoni Alto, described as “one of the best-preserved fortified villages in Tuscany”. Our route led us through it, and it is indeed a very attractive place; we think it’s mainly holiday apartments to let.

Some of the apartments have a simply staggering view.

It was very quiet and therefore too good an opportunity for aerial photography to miss out on.

The road from there leads down

and down and down; it’s a dirt road, but one with signs for motorists warning them that it’s a dangerous slope. We were still fairly high on the road when we realised what the lump was.

It was Rocca di Tentennano (sometimes called Rocca di Castiglione); the reason we rumbled this was that it had been hiding Castiglione d’Orcia behind its bulk and we could now see that we were in for a bit of a climb to get to our destination for the day. However, before we could start the ascent, we had to complete the descent, which led past the other point of interest of the day – Bagno Vignoni, a thermal spa.

While it was always going to be interesting to see the baths, the main thing for me was the presence there of a coffee stop.

It was a popular stop and there were a many cyclists there as well as pellegrinos and a few posh-looking people in civvies – there’s an upmarket hotel attached to the spa. You can tell because the inevitable cypresses are manicured to within an inch of their lives.

It’s an attractive setting.

and we enjoyed looking around it almost as much as we enjoyed the coffee and (very good) filled croissants that were on offer.

The Via route after that continues down and has to cross a river at its lowest point. In theory, there’s a pedestrian bridge across it

but it’s closed; they really don’t want you to use it.

We therefore walked around the road and started the ascent. This is where I realised how much I had misread the profile diagram. Bits of it were really steep – 18.6° was the steepest I recorded, and that is 1 in 3. I hastily revised my decision not to use walking poles and we made our way up the slope (it wasn’t all up, but the bits that were up were quite hard going). Of course, the views improved as we ascended.

and we eventually reached Castiglione

which was very pretty

and very full of cyclists.

We found out that our visit had coincided with the Tuscany Trail; some 600 lunatics cyclists completing a 430km ride. I didn’t notice any e-bikes among them….

Castiglione d’Orcia, being a place with a long historical record (first noted in the year 714) has a street layout that doesn’t owe much to common sense, and a street numbering system to match.  Jane did a great job to actually find our B&B, Il Vecchietta, which, it being only about 1.30pm,

was, of course, closed. However, a phone call brought forth someone to let us in, and we were able to hose ourselves down before heading down to the restaurant, Il Cassero, whence the kind person with the keys had come to our aid. We had a Nice Lunch there; very Italian and very affably served. I continued the pasta experiment and will report on it in due course.

After lunch, we had some time before the local Coop opened and we could buy milk for any cups of tea we might plan, and so I took the opportunity to do some more aerial work.

Rocca del Tentennano, which is a fortress. Really, it is.

You can clearly see the castle that gives this place its name

The walk to and from the Coop gave us the chance for some more pictures of the place.

Like Horace Wimp’s girl, it’s small, but veeery pretty.

And so to tomorrow, where we are back to dealing with a long walk, towards Radicofani, which involves a fair bit of uphill work and several fords, so it’s likely to be interesting as well as testing. The arrangements are all very complicated, but All Will Be Revealed in the next post.

 

* Sorry to appear racist, but I couldn’t resist

 

Day 9 – Buonconvento to San Quirico d’Orcia – a decent walk

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Thursday 22 May 2025 – With over 20km to walk today, and the prospect of some hills to climb, we opted for a reasonably prompt start. I felt I’d slept very badly, so the six o’clock alarm was not a welcome sound. I was astounded, therefore, on consulting Garmin Connect, the app for my activity monitor, to find that it, at least, was of the opinion that my Body Battery – its assessment of my energy levels – was well charged up, in stark contrast to preceding days. I wonder if this was a result of the pasta I’d had for lunch yesterday. I feel an experiment coming on…

Anyway, well-charged or not, we were under way shortly after 8am, into a cool morning, with some mist still visible in the hills.

Soon after leaving the outskirts of Buonconvento, the route took us to a grassy track

and before long we were back once more to wading through waist-high grass, which left our feet a bit damp, but was otherwise OK.

We passed a pond and Jane saw some movement in the water. At first we thought it was an otter, but actually, the pond contained coypu,


a large rodent, which neither of us had seen since we visited friends in France many years ago. In fact there were about five coypu there, in the water or on the bank.

We pressed on past the lovely scenery that is so abundant in these parts. After yesterday’s relative lack of vineyards, it was clear that we were back in Wine Country.

The track turned on to a dirt road

which took us past some fairly swanky-looking wineries, with their lovely cypress-lined driveways.

One of them, Carpazo, seemed keen to attract passing trade from pellegrinos

and bicigrinos.

We found out here why some of the vineyards have a “patchy corduroy” pattern when viewed from a distance.

Every other row was not mown. A tractor was running up and down the mown rows, pulling a crop sprayer which sprayed both sides

hence the need only to mow alternate rows. Mind you, a bit further on, we came across a tractor being used to mow every row, so there’s obviously a variety of viticultural approaches at work here.

We’d covered some 7km by this stage, and the track started to make one of the various climbs we knew we’d be doing.

Obviously, as we climbed, the views improved, and we got a decent look at a neighbouring mountaintop town called Montalcino.

It was a lot higher than us, so I was very glad it wasn’t on our route.

The landscape, as ever, was lovely.

We encountered a real pilgrim!

Sadly, my grab shot of him doesn’t really do him justice and I felt it would be intrusive to take more pics as he approached. He had a proper pilgrim’s walking pole, proper pilgrim sandals and was leading a donkey; on the donkey was riding a chihuahua

which made a cute sight.

As we breasted the top of a rise, the scenery changed, with evidence of landslips

and a more arable appearance, rather than vineyards.

Soon, we could clearly see a small town, Torrenieri

which marked (a) two-thirds of the distance and (b) more importantly, a coffee stop, at a bar called Ticci, although it seemed a normal size to me.

It also marked the start of another series of hills we had to climb – a smaller one, a larger one and then a final pull into our destination, San Quirico. The scenery was lovely

as long as one was selective!

We passed several ponds where it was clear that whatever yesterday’s noisy frogs were up to was the in thing for frogs to be getting up to. It is astonishing how loud the frog ponds were, and it made us smile as we walked by.

At one stage, we passed a possible diversion which would reportedly have taken us to The Classic Tuscan Panorama – a view over the Val d’Orcia which is apparently used all over the place. It being approximately two kilometres out of our way to get to it, we decided we really couldn’t be arsed, as the scenery we already had was pretty pleasant and markedly classic anyway.

Dirt road gave way to tarmac for a reasonably long stretch, and we had one pleasant surprise at a road junction. It’s an almost unbroken rule that where there’s a choice between two routes, the correct one is always the one that goes uphill. This junction

was an exception, and our route led down. Jane was delighted with the profusion of wild flowers that she spotted by the roadside, including some bee orchids. There were some nice scenery shots, too.

Soon, we could see San Quirico

and the road we were on would soon join a major road, so the track led off on another dirt road which went down to go under the major road.

This left us with the final pull up into San Quirico, during which we came across a chap with a long-handled hedge trimmer and a cherry picker who was actually shaving the cypress trees beside a posh-looking building.

I hadn’t realised that they needed that kind of maintenance. We also noted that at this particular property, the cypresses were supported by frames.

It seems that while cypresses grow naturally columnar, some people might like to manicure them to make them more uniform; and young trees can benefit from the frames to support them while they’re developing. (Thank you, ChatGPT.)

San Quirico hove into view above us

and, as before, catching sight of nice Tuscan scenery

served to distract from having to work that bit harder as we toiled up towards the town. We went under a viaduct

and – up a whole load of bloody steps – into the town,

to find that our B&B, La Locanda del Sorriso,

was closed up, with no-one home. It was only about 2.30, so we guessed that guests would perhaps be welcome after about 4pm and accordingly sought out some lunch.  Just along from the B&B was a square with two establishments on it

and it was easy to choose which to try. At first I was worried that the one we chose, called Vintage, didn’t do G&T, but actually they had a fine list of gins, including some from the Portobello distillery. Lunch was basic (lasagne for my pasta experiment, crostino for Jane) but good and included one of those “small world” occasions which make life so much more pleasant. A Dutch lass approached us and said “do I know you?”, which is an interesting conversational gambit. It turned out that she did – Jane (of course) had immediately worked out who she was, while I (of course) had no idea, since she was out of context. The context was M/V Hondius, the ship on which we had visited the Antardtic last year. She and her chap had been great company for some of the meals we took on board. He was working with the Dutch government on their various Covid measures; regrettably, we can’t remember either what her role was or, indeed her name. It was remarkable (a) that she was in the same place as us at the same time and (b) that she picked us out as familiar faces. I am really impressed that she did that, and it was lovely to have a chat with her for a while.

Lunch therefore took us until just after 4pm, when we wandered back towards the B&B. Co-incidentally, the lady who looks after it was also headed that way and somehow or other picked us out as tourists – amazing, that feminine intuition – so we were able to get into our room. The B&B is run remotely – no-one in residence and breakfast is via a coupon for a local eatery – but seems comfortable enough.

Since the B&B provided a kettle but no milk, we went for a walk. Obviously. The church on the square where we took our lunch is Chiesa di San Francesco.and its bells are mad.

We took a look inside it,

and the Collegiate Church that had greeted us as we walked into the town.

One feature in this church is marquetry panelling for the choir seating dating from the late 1400s

which was originally installed in the baptistry in Siena, but started to degrade. So one of the canons here bought seven of the panels that were in the best condition and installed them here. Here’s an example of one, and very fine work it is, too.

The town also sports a Pieve (monastery)

which we took a look inside

and we ended our walk, having triumphantly bought the milk at the local Coop, by coming through the 15th-century ornamental garden.

This is very difficult to convey photographically, so once we’d got back to the B&B, I got the drone out and whizzed it up to take a photo of it

and the town itself.

I also took a video, if you have a couple of minutes to spare.

That was about it for the day. We have a very light day tomorrow – just some 10km to walk – but en route there are a couple of Things To See, so we will take a look at them and report back in the fullness, for your delectation.