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Day 4 – San Gimignano to Colle di Val d’Elsa – a fording delight

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 Thursday 15 May 2025 – The breakfast restaurant in the hotel, on its first floor, offers a view to jump start anyone’s day

and the breakfast buffet was a good and varied one – and sophisticated, offering, as it did, Twining’s finest Earl Grey tea! (Every hotel we’ve stayed in has had a varied selection of Twining’s tea, but this is the first one which had Earl Grey, which, clearly, makes the hotel a class act.)

Breakfast over, we started out on our walk, which was going to be about the same distance as yesterday’s but not as arduous; it was also described as “one of the most delightful routes” in the S-cape app. The destination was a place whose name was quite a mouthful – Colle di Val d’Elsa, but about which we knew nothing except that our accommodation, a B&B, was in a non-rural area somewhat short of what looked like the town centre on Google Maps. This just goes to show how wrong can be the impression you gain of a place through consulting Google Maps.

Immediately outside our hotel, the Cisterna Square (which is actually triangular) was taken over by an incipient market.

We thought the weather was nice – pleasantly cool – but the lady here was clearly freezing to death and was swaddled in fleece and jeans.

San Gimignano continued to be picturesque as we made our way out

but we passed some curiosities. There was a shop selling guns and knives, obviously for hunters, and this market extended to the tobacconist as well.

We had found it odd enough that Pisa featured a Torture Museum. Here, there were two, within a few yards of each other. It’s obviously A Thing.

We bade goodbye to San Gimignano old town

and started off through the outskirts, overlooking a view of a somewhat foggy valley.

A roundabout was the scene of a very Italian piece of parking.

Other views were more of the attractive churches and buildings on the outskirts,

with a great view back towards San Gimignano.

Yes, there were cranes in the skyline and cables in the foreground, but the astonishingly capable editor on my Samsung phone soon dealt with those little problems.

We soon exchanged the road for a track leading upwards

past, as ever, some lovely views.

I was particularly taken with the tufty nature of this olive plantation.

The track changed from dirt road to woodland track

and led down to a ford

which we navigated satisfactorily, if a little unsteadily.

After the ford, the track went up (of course!)

and I began to wonder whether my decision to pack away my walking poles had been a good one. However, the uphill work, here and for the rest of the walk, was largely in the shade and I found I didn’t really need the sticks.

There were lots of butterflies around and one obligingly stopped for its closeup.

It may be only a Common Blue, but it’s an attractive colour. From a photographic point of view, I’ve no doubt that I got a better image with the Sony camera I’ve been toting around with me than I would have got with my phone, talented though it is.

Several times since we’ve started this walk, we’ve seen the ground carpeted in small clumps of fluff, and we wondered what had given rise to them. On this walk, we found the answer:

Black Poplar trees spreading their seeds.

Having gone up, we came down again, to another ford, this one very easily negotiable.

The stream had formed a little pool of clear water, in which we could see that tadpoles were swimming about.

A little further on, we passed the remnants of an Etruscan tomb

and were, in turn, passed by a group of three very serious hikers, carrying vast backpacks, who we thought might be pilgrims, but actually turned out to be birdwatchers, judging by the photographic equipment they deployed.

Up we went again, and down again, to a third ford. The stream though this one was a bit more substantial

and the stepping stones were not the sort that would be easy to use for three elderly pilgrims, so drastic measures were needed to cross it.

Jane loved to cool water flowing across her feet; me, less so. But Jane had been provident enough to pack a towel, so I could dry my feet before we carried on. We found several philosophical musings (in Italian) posted by the path

The longest one translated thus: “Whoever walks in the woods is looking for a different, inner freedom that makes him master of his own life. Listen to your breathing; you will listen better to your emotions and the beating of your heart. Do not seek distractions: THIS IS YOUR PATH!” I suppose it was a bit counterproductive that we sought a distraction in the shape of a translation….

After a reasonably substantial upward push, we arrived at a “punto panoramico” as indicated on our interactive map.


This was practically the highest point of the walk, hence, I suppose, being able to see several kilometres back to our starting point. Our map also indicated a “punto ristoro” with an icon of a cup.  The description said there were no services on this route, so I was intrigued to understand what this meant.  At first, it looked like just a resting point in the shade

but closer examination revealed

a coffee machine and a vending machine. My joy on seeing this was complete when I discovered that the coffee machine accepted contactless payment! So we treated ourselves to a rest and a coffee before moving on.

We passed a few more curiosities:

Instructions to dog owners not to let their animals crap on this patch of land

A self-service artisan’s kiosk, with an honesty box for those wanting to buy a decorated shell….

…placed invitingly beside a bench for passers-by to rest on

The previous day, we’d seen olive trees being pruned in what seemed like an odd way, chopping off whole branches and thinning the foliage hugely.  We saw more evidence of this here, too.

This is very different from the olive trees we saw being harvested in the Canaries – tall trees with thick foliage, and pickers up long ladders to reach the crop. Jane researched this and it turns out that what we’re seeing here is a pruning pattern more appropriate for the Tuscan climate: more open to let sunshine hit more places and so that humidity doesn’t affect the fruit; and lower, to make the olives easier to pick.

The surroundings became more urbanised, and we eventually came to the edge of Colle di Val d’Elsa (which henceforth I shall simply called “Colle” for convenience and to save typestrokes).

There was a sort of dissonance between faux-ancient on the right and real ancient on the left. It turned out that the ancient bit was the entrance, through a gate, Porta Nova, to the historic old town of Colle, which is very attractive.

This meant that our accommodation, Arnolfo B&B (named after Arnolfo di Cambio, a sculptor, architect, and urban planner of the 13th century who was born in Colle di Val d’Elsa), rather than being stuck out in some random suburb, as I had originally thought, was actually right in among the centro storico of Colle. The walk to it took us past some fantastic views.

The layout of the place is a bit confusing to first-time visitors, and it took us a little while to find our B&B. We blundered around a bit until Caroline pointed that we were actually standing right outside it.

It turned out that we were in luck; it was a couple of minutes past 1pm, when the reception would be closed, but when we rang the bell we were let in and were able to check in, collect our bags and go to our rooms to change for lunch. We asked the chap behind reception about lunch times and he reeled off a whole series of restaurants we could visit. We ended up settling on one called Il Torrione

which was back by Porta Nova, and which had a terrace at the back with fantastic views over the old town.

We just crept in at 2pm as the gate crashed down and were able to persuade them to give us lunch, and a very fine lunch it was, too – A Nice Lunch, in fact.

We blundered about a bit after lunch because we had various imperatives to address: seeing the Duomo; getting our credenziali stamped; and getting some milk so we could make ourselves tea back at the B&B. We started heading towards the Duomo, a route that led us past lovely views of the old town

and a rather engaging statue, “Il bambino che è in noi”, “the child within us”.

The Duomo has an imposing interior

and several imposing chapels around the edge

with some striking detail work.

After seeing the Duomo, Jane went off to get the stamps and I got the mission to buy the milk. This is where the slightly strange layout of the place had a major impact. The old city (which has no grocery shops of any description) is really well above the industrial newer town (which seemed to have plenty, some of which might be open), and so I had to get from one to the other, which involved finding and tottering down a very steep ramp. It also involved blundering around looking for a supermarket which Google Maps swore was here. Yes, here. But it wasn’t. It was there; a couple of hundred yards away on a different street. I was so grateful to find the milk in this vast supermarket

that I failed to take advantage of the possible availability of Twining’s finest Earl Grey to replenish our rapidly-diminishing stock.

And then, of course, I had to walk back up this bloody ramp

 

Estimated by the protractor app in my phone to be 15° – that’s one in six, or, to be technical, sodding steep

in order to get back to the B&B. Because I got the rough end of this stick, I shall indulge myself by showing you the altitude profile of my afternoon’s wanderings.

Just goes to show what an Englishman will do for a cup of tea.

That pretty much ended things for the day, and we retired to our rooms to prepare for the morrow. We will be walking to Monteriggioni along a route that the S-cape app rhapsodises about. It will be slightly longer but a little easier than today, so I’m hopeful that I will be able to report on another good day once we reach our destination (and hopefully get another Nice Lunch). Check back soon to find out how it all went.

 

 

Day 3 – Gambassi Terme to San Gimignano – shorter, but still non-trivial

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Wednesday 14 May 2025 – The very basic nature of our hostel accommodation was heavily borne in on us as we went down to breakfast. The tables had been set out with places allocated by name – and those before us had clearly completely ignored all this and there were basically no untouched places left for us to sit at; also, all the bread had been taken and not replaced, the kettle was nearly empty and the kitchen was locked. This was a very poor show, we thought. We’d arranged an 8am start between us and the many people who had exited earlier had swept through the buffet like a plague of locusts. It would have been a good idea to have someone on duty in the kitchen to help with replacement fodder. We organised tea and I had some cereal, but there was little there for Caroline or Jane to eat.

It’s an attractive enough setting

round the back of a 12th-Century church just outside Gambassi Terme,

but one feels it could be better run.

Off we went, then, at about 0830, into a morning in which the fog was just clearing. The Via Francigena signs pointed us towards Gambassie Terme, but the S-cape app’s red line bypassed the place.  We followed the line, and so I’m afraid I can’t tell you what the town was like. “Terme”, by the way, means it was a spa town.

The profile for the day (let me remined you here)

showed us going down from Gambassi Terme, then up about 300m overall (ugh!) before descending once more before a gentle rise up to San Gimignano. We started on tarmac before heading off on a dirt road

which led past an intriguing sign.

The scenery was, as before, lovely.

and I was particularly taken with the “stripy corduroy” effect achieved in some patches of vines.

The Chianti sign enigma was explained a little further on, as we passed an attractive winery.

It offered stamps for our “credenziali” (passports for the route) and the sign outside said it was open. But I think it was kind of Spanish open, i.e. closed. So we moved on, but in researching the name later, I learned a little to supplement my non-existent understanding of Italian wine. The Chianti region is in central Tuscany, with Chianti Classico being the area between Florence and Siena. This winery might produce Classico, or possibly Chianti Colli Senesi, which is regional to San Gimignano. Classico must be at least 80% Sangiovese grape variety, other variants of Chianti must be at least 70%.

We were on the down stretch of the walk, but soon reached the bottom, by another fine-looking establishment

which turned out to be a newly-opened agriturismo outfit called La Torre. At this point, the uphill work starts.

It was a long uphill pull, at times quite steep – but at least a lot of it was in the shade, which made it a lot less unpleasant than yesterday’s toil.

We passed a horse-riding centre (calling itself “Via Francigena”, so presumably offering people the chance to ride part of the route)

one of whose dogs accompanied us quite a way carrying a ball

but it didn’t want to part with it, so clearly wasn’t a retriever.

The steep uphill work continued for a while

but at least offered us great views of where we had earlier been descending.

We passed some handsome buildings

many of which seemed to be some kind of agriturismo setup, but none of which could actually be arsed to set up a coffee stop for thirsty passing pilgrims (of which it had to be said, there was a steady trickle).

We passed through a village, Pancole, which also had no coffee stops, but it did have a sanctuary.

We couldn’t, sadly, explore it because it was in use; a mass was about to start for a congregation seemingly made up of the local elderly and infirm – lots of ambulances and taxis outside – they didn’t invite us in, though.

We followed the road a little further until we could see San Gimignano in the distance; it didn’t seem to be much higher than we were, so I thought that perhaps the worst of the climb was over.

Wrongly, as it turned out. The Via signposts took us on to a track which carried on steeply uphill. In the spirit of proper completion, we grimly ploughed on and up, past more handsome buildings (but no coffee stops)

until we (a) got a good glimpse of our destination, San Gimignano

and (b) reached the highest point of the walk, marked by the Monasterio de Cellole.

In the inevitable way of these things, our route then led us down to a very poorly-designed road which led further down before going up into San Gimignano. One would have hoped the designers would have worked out some way of keeping it level for us poor pilgrims, but no. However, there was a consolation and a distraction because the views were, as before, stupendous. It was occasionally possible to catch a nice vignette of the countryside

but by and large it’s too big to fit into a single photo.


Eventually, we toiled up into San Gimignano, which is, you guessed it, very steep in places, mainly up

as we had to get to our hotel, Hotel La Cisterna, which is in the town’s main square, i.e. the highest point. Before you boys at the back start any schoolboy giggles, the name is nothing lavatorial. “Cisterna” in Italian means “Well”, which is more than one can say for the current US President, and you can see the well right in front of our hotel.

Our run of luck, of hotels being ready for us, continued, and our baggage had arrived, so, it being only about 1pm by this stage, we could swiftly get hosed down and changed and head out for a decent lunch, which we took just round the corner at a bar/cafe called Torre Guelfa.

After lunch, we were all feeling a siesta coming on, so had a quick look at the Duomo

and found out its opening hours for a later expedition for some sightseeing and gelato. We were intrigued by one gelato shop

which had the most extraordinary queue. It’s not as if it was the only one in town, so we decided it would clearly bear research later, when the crowds had dissipated. We also decided to visit one very interesting museum that Jane had found, to make sure we got to it before it closed.

It’s a beautiful recreation of how San Gimignano – “The City of Towers” – would have looked in medieval times. At one stage there were over a hundred towers in the town, mainly built by people to show off. 14 remain, and you can see some of them in the photos on this page.

Siesta over, we ventured out once more with our main objective being ice-cream a visit to the cathedral.  It is a well-recommended activity, and costs only €5 to get in. I wasn’t sure what to expect from such a highly-touted place, but there was a tiny clue as we headed for the entrance.

What you see, on walking in, is remarkably impactful. The interior of the church is liberally covered with frescoes and it made a huge impression on me.

It’s not an intimate space for communing with God, but it has a certain majesty about it.

Here’s a gallery of some of the photos I took to try to convey what the interior looks like.

After that, ice-cream seemed to be a good thing, so we went back to that popular shop

where the queue had died down a bit, and we could see the staggering variety of ice-cream they offered.

We consumed ours whilst sitting on the Duomo steps, and after that a drink seemed a necessity. We were heading for the Terraza outside our hotel when Jane suggested we walk down a side alley to a punto panoramico that (as it happens) our hotel bedroom looks out on. This was a good move.

There is a little enoteca in the Cisterna square called Divinorum, and it has a back door that offers a fantastic view in the afternoon sunshine.

A drink there in the last of the sunshine set us up nicely for a reasonably early night in preparation for the morrow.

Tomorrow’s walk is about the same length as today’s was, but should be a little less arduous. We have to get to Colle Val d’Elsa and the S-cape app describes the walk as “one of the most beautiful routes on the Via Francigena”. So we can look forward to something much nicer than the humdrum views we’ve been subjected to so far, eh?

Day 2 – San Miniato to Gambassi Terme – not so long, but hard

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Tuesday 13 May 2025 – Extraordinarily, given the rigours of yesterday, everyone was in reasonable shape as we convened for breakfast, which was a buffet affair with plenty of variety, so we were all able to eat our fill in preparation for the day to come.

One thing about the day was somewhat daunting – the last 4km of the walk.

This would be twice as long as yesterday’s final climb and ascend twice as far. I wasn’t looking forward to it. Another thing we knew about the walk was that there were effectively no coffee stops (there was one, but it was about three km in, so not particularly useful as a rest stop). So we had to get ourselves some food for a picnic lunch, which we got in a local store.

Off we went, then, through San Miniato, which is a place of monumental architecture

and stunning views.

Even as we walked along the road out of town, it was clear that the locals had some fantastic scenery to look at.

The expected length of the day’s walk was 24km – less than yesterday (praise be), but still a non-trivial amount of walking.  We started off along the road

and a couple of things were borne in on me. Firstly, that there were more walkers/pilgrims out than we’d seen the day before;

and secondly, there were a lot more ups and downs that we’d had to deal with the day before. There was also a lot more road than I had expected; we covered a full 6km – quarter of the day’s walking – on the road, up to a point where I began to wonder if tarmac was going to be the surface for the whole day, and also to get a bit fed up with the amount of up and down. I suppose I should have looked at the profile of the route (first photo) to realise that it was “Inca flat”, a phrase we’d learned in South America that described terrain that ends up the same altitude as it started, but isn’t actually flat at all. You can see from the sawtooth in that profile that this was what we had to deal with today.

Eventually, though, we left the road and joined a much more rural track.

There was still a lot of up and down, though. The track became slightly rougher as we went along

but the going was good; and the scenery was stunning.

The scenery had a role to play in trying to distract me from the rather tedious procession of ups and downs the track took. There was a fire in the distance, which we hoped was a controlled blaze.

We’d read that this route offered “no services” (hence the buying of our picnic lunch) but about 8km in we came across something that called itself a “punto sosta” for the Via Francigena:

a little cabinet with things that suffering walkers might appreciate – pain killers, bandage, disinfectant and so forth.

A charming idea – and one located by a picnic table for the poor sufferer to rest at.

We used the table for a short break, and then ceded it to a German couple who we’d seen the previous day; the gentleman is finding the walking rather trying – and I believe that they hadn’t realised that there were no rest stops on this route, either.

We pressed on and the track led past a wooden sculpture recognising 20 years of the Via Francigena to Rome.

Among the grass it says “20 years road to Rome” with the figure of a pilgrim and his faithful dog. Actually when we found it, it said “20 years oad to Rome”. Jane found the “r” and balanced it in place for the photo.

Next to it was a very amusing sight – an info board pointing out the delights of the view back to San Miniato, except that in the interim, trees had grown up to obscure the view the board purported to explain.

The track by now was a bit rougher still, but the scenery continued to be as much of a distraction as scenery can be. As well as stunning views, we passed a building, presumably a farm building, which had many chickens and other poultry outside

and a very charismatic cockerel posing in the middle of the yard.

Very shortly thereafter we passed two interesting and not unrelated sights: a signpost showing the distances involved in the whole Via Francigena, from Canterbury to Rome;

and a lady from New Zealand who was walking the whole route, but from Rome to Canterbury. That’s dedication, that is.

The track was becoming increasingly rudimentary,

and there were some stretches where mud made picking one’s route a matter of importance. We passed a donkey mill

now disused and repurposed for the storage of hay rather than anything else.

The track was rough and tedious, by this stage, still going up and down like a very up and down thing, but the scenery continued to be stunning, if one could be bothered to appreciate it.

The touble was, appreciating it was beginning to be very difficult. We found a shady place to stop and eat our sandwiches and it was at about this point – somewhat over half way – that my body decided that the goodwill it had extended to get me this far was used up and started to go on selective strikes. The mechanism that provided energy to the leg muscles clocked off; and the one that mitigated pain to the shoulders started a work to rule.

In the following photo of the lovely scenery

it is possible to see our destination for the day, Gambassi Terme.

and, as expected, it’s quite a lot higher than we were at this point. About 4km from our end point, the route started up,

and I noted the situation shown by S-cape’s interactive route map of the day.

to which my response was this.

The couple of kilometres after lunch were the worst. The couple of kilometres after that, they were the worst, too. After that, things went into to a bit of a decline. All three of us struggled for those last four km. We didn’t even make it all the way up to Gambasi Terme

as our accommodation, Ostello Sigerico was (mercifully) a kilometre or so short of the town. We were grateful to be able to stop. Jane and I collapsed into something of a daze for a while before cleaning ourselves up for an evening meal.

Given what feels like the hard work I’d put in to days 1 and 2 of this walk, I was a bit miffed, on checking in with the data collected by my Garmin activity tracker, to find that, although I’d undergone 434 minutes of activity yesterday and 350 today, only 7 and 5 minutes respectively were considered to have been “vigorous”. I have to tell you that it bloody didn’t feel that way inside my body.

As the name of  our accommodation suggests, it’s not a luxury hotel, but a hostel – towards the luxury end of these things, but a hostel nevertheless. (Sigerico was a 10th-century Archbishop of Canterbury who made a pilgrimage to Rome, following the Via Francigena and arriving in 990.) Our terms were half board, and the evening meal was very much a pilgrim meal – pasta followed by pork and beans. Basic, but nonetheless wholesome and tasty. We shared a table with some Francophone people, a couple and a single, who each, in their own way, were dedicating time in their lives to covering significant parts of the Via Francigena.

Tomorrow, we actually get the chance for a more relaxed day – about 15km of walking, although there’s quite a bit of up and down in it.

It will be interesting to see how our energy levels are. The target is San Gimignano,a UNESCO World Heritage site, so I hope we arrive with sufficient energy to go sightseeing around it. Stay tuned to see how the day turned out.