Tag Archives: Italy

Getting there

4 Replies

Saturday 13 June 2026 – In the opening salvo for our Istanbul trip, I inveighed at some length about the horrors of an 0230 alarm call and how I never wanted to suffer another one.

Well….

Our alarm was set for 0330 in order to get us to Heathrow for our 0700 flight to Pisa.  Our taxi was due at 0430; 0431 came and went, and we were, of course, immediately worried that Someone Had Blundered and that we would have a frantic dash to an overpriced airport car park. But the taxi turned up only about five minutes late, and he still managed to get us to Heathrow before 0500, mainly by displaying a fine contempt for speed limits.

Terminal 5 was busy – largely because we were there a few minutes before the bag drop actually opened… 

Despite being lumped in with hoi polloi at the back of the aeroplane, I thought my hard-foughtpaid-for Bronze membership of the BA Club would get us through the bag drop process (once it opened) quickly, only to discover, as we jumped from queue to queue in a vain attempt to find one which actually moved, that the cattle class bag drop was entirely deserted. So we waved goodbye to our bags there and headed for security.

My backpack was laden with cameras, power banks, backup drives, cables, adapters and other technical paraphernalia, and so I tend to expect that mine is the one that will attract attention as it passes through the scanners. It was actually Jane’s backpack that got picked on this time, because of the suspicious, nay subversive, items therein – spare (plastic) ferrules for our walking poles. That little setback aside, we were on our way with 90 minutes to spare before our departure, so a stop for coffee seemed a good idea.  I peered over the edge into the mosh pit of Terminal 5’s departure lounge

and it suddenly seemed a good idea to find a sit-down restaurant for our coffee. We took our seats in the Giraffe “Feel Good Food” restaurant and donned our cloak of invisibility for the obligatory 10 minutes until someone decided that our custom might be worthwhile, and ordered coffee-and-Danish, seated in front of a screen telling us that information on our departure gate would be vouchsafed to us in 40 minutes or so.  In the meantime, Google (via our boarding passes in our Google Wallets) had told us not only what our gate number was but also promised that the flight would be on time. It’s a fine philosophical point this – is this prescience on Google’s part an impressive victory for the power of technology harnessed for the good of humanity? Or is it just a tiny but creepy? Just like the fact that, towards the expiry of a bank card, it knows the details of my new one apparently before my bank does and certainly before my bank tells me. I mean, I’m only the customer here. (Of course, since I don’t pay for my banking and therefore the service is free, it means I’m the product, not the customer.)

Anyhoo…coffee and Danish consumed, we went to our gate. While we awaited our summons for the flight, a chap in a green HF Holidays shirt and sporting a name badge came over and asked us if by any chance we were with the HF Holidays group. Something about us (maybe the Merrell footwear or the Craghopper trousers) had clearly marked us out in Trevor’s eyes as being candidates for his group of Cinque Terre visitors. And so it was that we met a significant fraction of the (delightfully) small group with whom we’d be spending the next few days. The group is just eight people, plus the very genial Trevor, who, having introduced us all round, pottered off in search of the remaining group members. This was our first introduction to the HF Holidays universe – many of the group had been on multiple HF Holiday gatherings, which boded well for the rest of our week.

While all this was going on, BA personnel were prowling the area looking for people with large bags so that they could sorrowfully tell them that because the flight was full, the bags would have to be checked in to the hold. In the event, there were empty seats on the plane (some of them, delightfully, beside me) and so I wondered why they were being so pre-emptive. Anyway, the flight pushed back early and arrived even earlier, which is not quite the good news that it might be, as it meant that Pisa Airport weren’t ready for us with sufficient buses. But after only ten minutes or so of standing in bright sunshine and 25°C temperatures while dressed in our 4.30am trousers and fleeces, a bus arrived to take us to the entry point to the terminal.

I say “entry point to the terminal” with a slightly hollow laugh. Under a canopy obviously specially erected for just this circumstance, this is what we were faced with,

courtesy of the brain-damaged decision by 51.89% of the Great British Voting Public to leave the EU. For some moments, we inched forward as people at the front of the queue painstakingly had their fingerprints and mugshots taken, before the Italian authorities decided “bugger it” and reverted to the previous arrangement. So we shot forward into a delightfully cool terminal, past the now-redundant machines

(in their defence there four more on the other side of this partition)  to

more queues. The irony of the poster beside this second set of queues was not lost on me.

The process of getting through immigration took about an hour, but it did mean that our bags were waiting for us as we clustered around Trevor in the baggage hall; he then led us off to meet our bus driver who was called, I think Jeremiah. He was in charge of a vehicle which had enough seats to accommodate us, almost enough luggage space in its boot to hold all our bags and absolutely no bloody legroom for anyone taller than 5′ 6″. It also had a suspension system designed to cope with much more weight than it was laden with today – it was a bumpy, uncomfortable ride for 90 minutes as we headed to Bonassola, which was to be our base for the week.  Trevor tried to distract us by pointing out Things Of Interest as we went; we caught sight of the roof of the baptistry building on the site of the famous Leaning Tower, for example. However, since we’d spent considerable time at the site only a year ago, not getting a better view wasn’t an issue.

Eventually we left the high-speed but bumpy motorway for the low-speed and twisty roads that led to Bonassola. Every so often, we could get a glimpse of the very attractive-looking coastline, and then we got our first sights of Bonassola itself.

Before long we had reached the limit of where the bus could take us – the pedestrian area of the town

which is very clearly a seaside resorty sort of place.

Waiting for us there was Rebecca, Trevor’s accomplice from HF holidays, who pointed us towards our hotel, the Hotel delle Rose, 

a short suitcase trundle away where we were welcomed with smiles and great efficiency, so that we were in our room within minutes and the aircon switched on. 

One of the attractive aspects of this walking holiday is that it’s not a place-to-place-to-place affair like a Via Francigena or Camino; we’re here for the week, so could completely unpack and make ourselves at home. So we did that, and then went out to get something to eat, it being by now quite a long time since the 0730 BA flapjack had hit our digestive systems. Fortunately, hard next door to Hotel delle Rose is Caffè delle Rose,

which apart from being a gelateria artigiana, does a mean focaccia panini and salata vegeteriana. And beer. So we availed ourselves of those and were joined by Jenny, one of our group, giving us the chance to get to know her a little better.

After lunch, we rested for a little while at the hotel before joining a short walk round Bonassola,

to enable Trevor to show us where the important things were in the town, particularly places where we could buy packed lunches, since (sigh) we might be short of coffee bars to rest at over the course of the next week.

The tour was, of necessity, quite short, because Bonassola is not a big place. Along one side of the main street is an embankment which was originally the support for a railway built in Victorian times

and which provided both a bulwark against the worst of the sea weather when it was bad and allowed tunnels through so that people could get access to the beaches.

It’s a charming place, particularly in the sunshine, which we’re due to see a lot of during the week we’re here. As I write this, I’m glad to see the lovely weather. Come back and talk to me as I’m toiling up the steep valley sides in 30°C heat later on in the week and I might have a different attitude, but for now it seemed like a nice-a place. There were some lovely décor touches as we walked around.

In the main supermarket in the town we had another striking “small world” encounter. The keen of memory among you will remember that we were in this neck of the woods (but somewhat south of here) a year ago when we walked the Via Francigena. In a place called San Quirico, we bumped into a Dutch lass who we’d first met the year before in the Antarctic on M/V Hondius. Today, as we queued up with our bananas, the lass in front of us was none other than Agnese, an Italian girl who we’d first met on M/V Kinfish at the other end of the earth, in the Arctic. She it was, along with Karlo, her chap, who participated, along with other people of questionable sanity, in the Polar Plunge as we navigated alongside the glacial coast of Bråsvellbreen, and now there she was in the same Italian shop as us; she and Karlo had come to visit her mum, who has a place in Bonassola. The first coincidence was pretty unusual; the second was, frankly, astonishing.

We were a bit short of Euro cash, and needed to find an ATM. The one that Trevor knew about was no longer active, but back at the hotel, Rebecca pointed us at the Post Office. To find it, she said, we had to walk past “the old men”. It was quite clear what she meant;

a sight quite common in Southern Europe – the menfolk of the town sitting round in the shade and shooting the breeze, presumably to the great relief of their spouses, who will be glad they’re out of the house.

Back at the hotel, we had a welcome briefing on the hotel’s rooftop terrace over a glass of (a very decent) Prosecco,

during which we found out what awaited us the following day (a choice between a shorter or longer walk, which they accidentally kept calling the easier or harder walk). And then we finished off the day with dinner at a local restaurant just round the corner,

followed by a final cuppa back on the hotel terrace.

Thus ended our journey to the outskirts of the Cinque Terre. Tomorrow we get the chance to explore at least one of the villages and work out for ourselves exactly how hard the walking is going to be (by all accounts, quite hard, incidentally). Stay tuned to see how much we suffer, why don’t you? 

 

 

 

 

Day 22 – La Giustiniana to Rome. Well, all roads lead there, don’t they?

8 Replies

Friday 5 June 2025 – Our last day of walking, then. 16km, eh? On roads through Rome’s suburbs? In 30°C heat? Have you taken leave of your senses?

For some reason, the 30° heat here has been, at least for me, more enervating than the 35-40° heat we encountered when we walked the Camino Francés. I was only two years younger then – can those two years have made such a dramatic difference to my tolerance for higher temperatures? Except that I haven’t done any cycling for those two years, I’d say my fitness now is about the same as it was then. But I’ve found the conditions for the last 100km, since Montefiascone, to be really quite oppressive. People we’ve talked to seemed to think it was unseasonably hot, too.

Anyway, the practical upshot of considering the lunacy of walking the final 16km was that Jane Made A Plan.  This is how the day unfolded.

Yes, it says “Walking” at the top, but I cannot tell a lie: we took the train. It was a short walk from the hotel to the local station, and a €1 (each) fare to get us to a station called Appiano, which offers a viewpoint of the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, whence we walked into Vatican City to get our Testimonia.

The train ride provided one of those coincidences that leaven the weary flatness of life. We knew that the French couple we’d chatted to at Monte Gelato the day before yesterday (and then some more that evening in Campagnano, as it happened) were planning to take the train towards Rome because they, too, were finding the heat oppressive. Astonishingly, when we stepped onto the train – there they were! Same train, same carriage, same seating area – a very unlikely combination.  They got off a couple of stops before us so that they could walk through a nature reserve as part of their final day, whereas we wimped out and detrained a little nearer the final destination.

At Appiano, one can take a short walk along paths which include the cursed strada bianca

to a belvedere, offering this view:

The dome of St. Peter’s is clearly visible and you can make out the walls of Vatican City, too. From there, a path leads to a coffee bar

which, had we known it, was almost back at Appiano station. We refreshed ourselves with a coffee and then walked down the winding path that takes one towards St. Peter’s. By and large, the route was pretty much standard crowded-city-on-a-hot-sweaty-day, but there was some slightly classy graffiti to be seen.

Getting round the outside of the Vatican City walls

made us sharply aware of the contrast between the almost total solitariness of the countryside we’d traversed and the realities of life in a capital city, which is not only a pilgrimage destination but a popular tourist site. There was lots of traffic and noise, and tour groups everywhere;

tourist tat shops ubiqutious;

and, as for getting into St. Peter’s Square, where the entry is through the right-hand arch?

It looked daunting, but Jane did the sort of thing that wouldn’t have occurred to me and Asked The Way. Anyone who can show a credenziale can skip the line!

So we followed the gent in the dog collar and actually whizzed through. There was a security check, and I’m glad I’d decided to leave my penknife in my suitcase, but within a few minutes we were through and into St. Peter’s “Square”. There is a special entrance for pilgrims

which leads to its own security lane, past a selfie point

and towards the place where volunteers were awaiting us to give us our certificates. It was a bit of a zoo,

as lots of other things are on offer in that corridor, but we had a very warm welcome from the two volunteers who were providing testimonia and timbri. Having got these, it then transpired that we were free to enter the Basilica itself, with no further queuing!

Well, almost.

Just as we were about to mount the steps, another volunteer held us back and closed off access. He explained that it would only be for a few moments, but there were some special processional groups who were preparing to enter the Basilica, and they took priority, which is fair enough.

Actually, three processions went through, one of which sang as they went, which I thought was a nice touch. Meanwhile

we waited until the nice man let us through, when we charged into the Basilica!

Well, not really.

Here’s what it was like to get into the church.

I suppose it’s inevitable when you are at the centre of a global religion with 1.2 billion adherents that there will be crowds. Some of them might even be Catholics. Inside the Basilica, magnificence is in plentiful supply,

as are people.

There’s a slow and steady shuffle of punters, all waving cameras in the air and taking selfies. The place is extraordinary, but too big and too crowded to do it any kind of photographic justice. So we shuffled in and round and marvelled at the place and then shuffled out in search of refreshment. We caught a change in the Swiss Guard

passed a statue, the “Angels Unawares” boat by Canadian artist Timothy P. Schmalz, dedicated to the world’s migrants and refugees,

and tried to capture a photo of the arena outside

but it’s too big (is it always full of chairs, or is this for something special?) and I think that if I’d launched the drone there might have been comment. So we took a last view as we left St.Peter’s Basilica.

There’s a cafe nearby, but it seemed they didn’t want us to invade their privacy, and the streets nearby are loaded with eateries and drinkeries

which we thought would be crowded and probably expensive, so we decided that it might be better to head off to our hotel and see if we could check in.

Our accommodation was the Dharma Style, which is near the central station, so it was straightforward to get to on the Metro. Our room was, indeed, available, but our bags hadn’t yet arrived (probably stuck in some ghastly traffic jam somewhere). So we headed out into the street where there was immediately a restaurant that was thronged with people. We decided to lunch there, even though it showed pictures of the food, and enjoyed a good lunch (including gin!) before retiring to the hotel to rest and recuperate for the rigours of the journey home.

For tomorrow we go from Rome to home, or that’s our plan; we’ve yet to see what BA’s plan for us is, but we’re sanguine that we will have a joyful homecoming having walked 394.47km of the Via Francigena and nearly 100km of related sightseeing.

As an experience, it’s been significantly different from walking the Camino in Spain, which after a moment’s thought would be bleedin’ obvious: hundreds of thousands of pilgrims a year enables and sustains an infrastructure that hundreds of pilgrims a year can’t. The walking here in Italy has been tougher than almost all of the Camino paths, and some of the scenery more spectacular as a result. The heat towards the end made the experience somewhat more trying than I would have liked; and I am looking forward to getting back to a country which serves hot coffee in large cups; but we’ve enjoyed this big adventure and all the small adventures that have gone to make it the experience it has been.  We have plans for some other long walks, and you can rest assured that I will use these pages to rabbit on about them; I hope you will stay in touch to read the result.

 

 

 

Day 21 – Campagnano to La Giustiniana – hot! and, in places, unrewarding

4 Replies

Wednesday 4 June 2025 – We knew that today was forecast to be a hot day (30°C) and, because we had to cover a decent distance – over 25km – we decided to start early, so I set the alarm for (shudder) 0500. In theory, then, we should have been snuggled up in bed by 9pm yesterday in order to benefit from eight hours of good, solid sleep.

Ha!

Our hotel room looked out on a busy roundabout, with a couple of bars and restaurants on it or nearby.

At 9pm, there were just a couple of people sitting outside the bars. By 1030, there were crowds of folk all evidently and noisily having a whale of a time, which they continued to do for quite some while. So neither of us got a decent night’s sleep, but we still got up at 0500 and got on with it, so that we were having coffee and croissant(s in my case) at one of these bars

shortly after 0600, and off on the day’s walk before 0630 in nice cool conditions.

The low point (0500 alarm) was, annoyingly, quite shortly followed by a high point – the highest point of the day’s walk, in fact – as we had to climb 200m within the first couple of kilometres, which was harder work than was welcome at that hour (or, for me, any hour, really). At least it was nice and cool, and the road we were walking on was quiet. The reward was, of course, a reasonably decent view,

with the very real possibility that what we could see in the distance was our target for the day, or at least the start of the urban sprawl of Rome. It was pleasant walking in the morning cool.

We passed several of these sorts of things during the first part of the day,

and wondered what they were. I reckon that the wooden structure is for parking a horse and the stone block is a mounting block for when you want to use it again. We certainly saw some references, whilst walking narrow roads, that said that hikers and riders were obliged to proceed in single file, giving credence to the possibility that it was a standard horse riding route.  In theory the Via Francigena itself can be completed on horseback, but I think that could be quite challenging, not least for the horse.

We also saw several crosses, like this one,

but sequentially numbered; at the same time we saw signposts to the “Santuario del Sorbo”. The only Sorbo I had known previous to the Via was the actor Kevin Sorbo who played Hercules in the ridiculous but entertaining TV series about his adventures made by the company who also brought us “Xena – Warrior Princess”. Anyway, it turns out that this Sorbo is a river and the santuario is named for the Madonna del Sorbo. The numbers on the crosses increased, until, outside the santuario is

no. 14, so the assumption is that the series represents the Stations of the Cross. The santuario is a handsome building

with lovely frescoes behind the altar.

We began to see regular milestones (kilometrestones? – Ed) for the Via, telling us how far we had to go.

As well as a Madonna, the Sorbo has a parco, where we saw swallows resting on a telephone line

cows,

some of which surrounded today’s Mystery Object

and all of which were free to roam (there were a pair of cattle grids limiting them, but that’s all) – and at least one exploited this freedom quite liberally.

The parco animal life included horses, which we saw crossing the road

and, indeed, crossing it back again,

possibly having decided they didn’t want to mix it with the mob that side of the street.

The route took us towards the town of Formello, although we had to stay on the road rather than follow the official track.

We don’t know how seriously The Powers That Be didn’t want us going down that track, but they didn’t want people going up it from the other end, either,

and in the meantime, the view from the road was quite decent.

Formello is substantial enough to have several coffee bars, so we stopped at one for a second breakfast. The Via then took us past a building with a rather interesting mural on it,

made from all sorts of different materials – bits of stone, mirror glass, flowers and more.

It then dived into the old town,

which was really rather lovely.

and included some very pretty corners.

We left Formello at about 0930, having really enjoyed the walk thus far. Things rather went downhill (and uphill – Ed) from then on; this whole region is in an area called the Parco de Veio, and the trail entered an area of woodland

which encompassed its next ten kilometres;

and while we passed some nice scenes, it became, frankly, hot and tedious – a fenced path

that led relentlessly and unrewardingly on and on.  And down. And up. If there is a parco superintendento, my message to him is – put in some bloody parco benchos, will you? 10 kilometres is too far to walk in conditions such as today’s with nowhere to rest.

We left the woodland area within sight of the urban edge of Rome and these pleasingly ordered straw bales.

The route led towards Isola Farnese, which we rather hoped might offer the possibility of a coffee stop (or, more accurately, a beer stop). First, it passed something completely unexpected.

This is the Cascata della Mola Veio, and it has an impressive drop over the edge.

Isola Farnese disappointed in the bar stakes, and merged into La Storta, which we knew would offer some refreshment possibilities – but we had to toil on for about another 3km until about 23km into the walk, when we reached a bar where we could each have a glass of something cold. OK, two glasses of something cold. As we refreshed ourselves, we hatched a lunch plan that involved pizza, and walked along the main drag of La Storta , where it was clear we were very much into the edge of the Rome urban sprawl.

There were a couple of pizza joints on offer and one of them offered gin as well, which meant they got our business. They were a bit naughty, telling us that a pizza wasn’t big enough for two people, thus persuading us to order two pizzas. They were huge. One would easily have fed us both and we only finished half of each pizza; but they were tasty, and the lunch overall was  very good value.  They offered us the opportunity to take the remnants with us, but the idea of toting them along with us for the hot half hour’s walk to our accommodation didn’t much appeal.

Our target was in La Giustiniana, giust a little along the road from La Storta (which is the “official” end of this leg of the Via) – the  Resort La Rocchetta. In a departure from normal practice, they close the reception at 4pm, but Jane had been in contact to find out what would be needed if we were later than that. She had also asked if it might be possible to have a kettle in the room, and they conceded that, although this was not a facility available in the standard room we had booked, they might be able to find one for us. We optimistically diverted from the main drag to find a Conad supermarket to buy some milk, just in case, and finally sweated and toiled our way to the resort

for about 3.15pm – very, very hot and very, very tired.  We had covered over 28km in over 30 degree heat (which made it the toughest day of the Via so far for us) and we were very glad when the nice lady on reception told us that we had been upgraded to a superior room – so we had our kettle! Twining’s finest Earl Grey all round! Our stay at this hotel was very pleasant – we were able to relax in preparation for the morrow.

Tomorrow is the final day of walking, when we shall arrive in Rome, hie ourselves to St. Peter’s gaff in the Vatican and get our testimonium to prove our worth as pilgrims.  To avoid too much testy moaning on what will be an even hotter day, we might not walk all the way. Jane has a Cunning Plan but you’ll have to read the next entry to find out what that was.