Tag Archives: Fortress

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

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 5 – Colle to Monteriggioni – Adventures beside the river

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.

Very odd decor in the loo

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.

This view is taken from the walls above one entry gate, and you can clearly see the gate at the other side

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!

 

Oy, Oy, Ollantaytambo – a day in the Sacred Valley

13th April 2018

[Long Read Warning – this was a content-rich day. Get a coffee, or a drink, is my advice]

The valley that runs from Pisac to Ollantaytambo was called the Sacred Valley by the Incas, as it ran along side of the Urubamba river, also known as Willkamayu in the local Quecha language, meaning “sacred river”. It became an important part of the Inca empire, and having the advantages of lower altitude and water, was a good area for farming, principally maize and potatoes.

Our day in the Sacred Valley was spent travelling through the valley from Pisac to Ollantaytambo. The weather at first was very dull – raining quite hard at times – but it cheered up as the day progressed.

Pisac is well-known for its market, which takes over a latge part of the town. These days, it plays mainly to tourists, and, like many such, it’s a colourful place.

Pisac - market stall

Many of the stallholders dress traditionally,

Pisac - market stall

and there are one or two locals also dressed traditionally, in the hope of getting a tourist Sol or two as a photo opportunity.

Pisac - seeking photo opportunities

Some of the fabric designs are wonderful.

Pisac - pattern weaving

 

Pisac - pattern weaving

Traditional dress figures strongly among the locals (particularly, it must be said, the older ones)

Pisac - traditional dress in modern life

but modern life exists alongside tradition.

Pisac - traditional meets modern

 

Pisac - lady carrying milk to market

Above – this lady is carrying milk, direct from the cow, to sell it at a stall

Pisac - street scene

Shortly after I took the picture above, one of the ladies handed her lamb to the other, and pottered off on some mission or other.

The town itself is pleasant, quite pretty in places, but the usual South American mix of colour, charm and scruffiness.

Pisac - side street and terraces

 

Pisac - view over the town

On the outskirts is a tiny church (not the only one, but the cutest)

Pisac - a tiny church on the outskirts

and many of the buildings sport a pair of animal statues on their roofs, by way of a blessing.

Pisac - roof decoration

The town is well-paved, with aqueducts running along many of the streets

Pisac - aqueducts in the streets to distribute rainwater

beside which you see mosaic versions of many Inca animals, with the condor (the animal the Incas held in very high regard) featuring often, in different representations.

Pisac - a stylised condor in street artwork

and other traditional Inca animals such as the snake (bottom of the snake-puma-condor hierarchy).

Occasionally, you can see, outside a shop, a small basket hangingn on a pole. This means that the establishment is a public bakery. People can bring things – including cuy, or guinea pig – to be baked.

Pisac - public baking oven

If the pole sports a red thing at the end,

Pisac - local version of a pub

it means that the place serves chicha, a local alcoholic drink. There are plenty of these establishments.

The town’s Inca roots can be seen in some still-extant terracing, originally used for farming, but here used to support a cemetery. Note the protrusions in the middle of the terrace wall; these form an Inca-style staircase

Pisac - an Inca staircase

which is still in use today!

Pisac - an Inca staircase

Our journey from Pisac to Ollantaytambo involved some notable items of interest. For example, a town called Lamay seems to specialise in eateries which will serve you the local delicacy – guinea pig, or cuy. The marketing is not subtle

Lamay - Cuy Central

in the way that it tells you that you get guinea pig on a stick.

Lamay - Cuy Central

Jane tells me that it smelt delicious.

Cuy is very clearly a delicacy and one to market heavily.

Lamay - Cuy Central

We stopped for lunch (not guinea pig!) at a splendid place called “Sol y Luna“, which, being Relais et Chateau, was, obvs, dead posh. We had a lovely lunch and were, unexpectedly, entertained with a display of traditional Peruvian horsemanship

and dancing.

After lunch we went to Ollantaytambo, which was a delight, but only after bumping up a considerably cobbled road through narrow streets. The town itself is, yes, typically South American – charming in places, scruffy in others and quite colourful.

Ollantaytambo seen from the Temple

Ollantaytambo - side street with central aqueduct

Ollantaytambo - street with aqueduct

but what it’s best-known for is a very substantial Inca fortress.

Ollantaytambo - at the foot of the Temple

Ollantaytambo - view over the temple terraces

which you can climb up if you have the stomach (or, rather, the lungs) for 300 steps up at altitude. If so, you get to see some fabulous Inca stonework

Ollantaytambo - Inca stonework

with beautifully interlocking (and very substantial) stones which provide a base stable enough to resist earthquake)

Ollantaytambo - Inca niches

containing niches for idols, fashioned in the traditional Inca trapezoidal shape)

and differentiatng between the temple part (on the left, with top notch stonework) and the farming part (on the right, still good stonework, but not of the top quality reserved only for noble houses and temples).

At the top is the throne, reserved for the ruler to view his fiefdom,

Ollantaytambo - the ruler's seat

and this is his view. Note that the alignment of this is such that at spring equinox, the sun rises exactly over the top of the mountain in the centre of the picture.

There was a huge amount to learn from the Ollantaytambo site – how the accoustics of the design allowed for eavesdropping on conversations at a lower level; how it was never completed; how much of it was buried so that when the Spaniards came and took over (after a battle which they lost, incidentally) they didn’t find (and hence destroy) what was there – it’s around 80% complete and only the perishable stuff (like roofing, traditionally made using bamboo to support thatching) has disappeared. Some restoration work has been done, but fundamentally the site has survived over the centuries due to the remarkable stoneworking abilities of the Incas.

This was the first significant exposure to Inca work that we had seen on our travels, and it was a very impressive site and sight. There is much to learn about the Incas, and Camila, our guide, gave us some wonderful historical and cultural insights. I’ve tried to get across some of them, but, fundamentally, what takes your breath away is the size and scale of the place – an excellent end to a long and varied day.