Tag Archives: Roman

Day 18 – Capranica to Sutri – Short but engaging walk and destination

Sunday 1 June 2025 – I’m not a fan of counting steps as a way of monitoring one’s health, but since I use a Garmin activity monitor and since Garmin Connect, its app, displays a step count if I want one, I take a look now and then. The thing about Garmin Connect is that if one exceeds the step count goal it sets for you one day, it doesn’t pat you on the back, or anything; it simply increases the goal for the morrow. So, this morning, I saw that my goal was

(a) as high as it’s ever been and (b) unlikely to be met, since we only had maybe 8km to go.

The earliest that Francesco could be persuaded to provide breakfast was 8am, but since we only had a short walk in front of us to get to Sutri, our destination for the day, we thought (correctly, as it turned out) that it wouldn’t be an issue. Francesco served us a good breakfast, with hot bread rolls and excellent hot croissants, to fortify us for our journey. Before we left, he showed us an interesting feature of the excellent property he runs – Etruscan caves underneath it.

By toiling up yesterday to the B&B, we had done practically all of the climbing that today would entail (until later on – keep reading), so I wasn’t too fussed when we started out on a strada bianca, particularly since it was fairly shady.

In any case, we soon turned off on to another much shadier path

that led to the most engaging part of the day’s walk – a trail largely following a stream through Etruscan woods. For the most part it was lovely, although there were a couple of places where a bit of care was needed.

A shady path

Some steps to help

A bit of a barrier

A waterfall and disused water wheel

Rickety rackety bridge no. 1

Rickety rackety bridge no. 2

Evidence that a lot of work had been necessary to clear fallen trees

A tight squeeze between boulders

Ricket rackety bridge no. 3

And…emerge blinking into the sunshine

Amazingly, in the mud along the trail we saw evidence that lunatic mountain bikers had followed the same path… Anyhoo, it was then a short walk until we saw Sutri,

which, you will note, is somewhat higher than we were. Yes, we had to climb up into the town.

Quite a long way up, actually,

but it led us to a small old town which, like them all, is a bit scruffy, but has many charming corners.

An ancient communal Lavatoio, now repurposed as a fountain

We were quite early – it was only 10.30am – so we found our way to our B&B, the enticingly but inexplicably named Notti d’Oriente (what did we do before Google Maps, eh?) where, as we had hoped, someone was hosing the place down from the previous day’s occupants; she was kind enough to furnish us with keys, a place to put our backpacks and a timbro, and we got out of her way by going for a walk. Obviously. Sutri has an attractive central square which, it being Sunday morning, had an agreeable buzz about it,

and there are some handsome corners as you walk around.

Jane had a plan (natch) which took us to the Duomo,

whose imposing interior has some great ceiling work.

We also looked in on a much humbler church, that dedicated to St. Croce.

This church gave us the opportunity to light a candle to Martin, and also to see a statue

and a likeness

of possibly Jane’s favourite saint, St. Jude Thaddeus, an Apostle and the patron saint of lost causes.

Outside the Old Town and somewhat to the south of it is the Ancient Town. The Old Town is mainly medieval, but the Ancient Town goes back to Etruscan and Roman times. The walk down takes you past a viewpoint of some Etruscan tombs

which you can get closer to as you walk through the park,

and muse on the ancient Etruscan storage cabinet therein.

In this park are several ancient objects of interest: the remains of a Roman amphitheatre, carved out of the ubiquitous volcanic tuff;

the renaissance Villa Savorelli, 15th century, with associated church of Madonna del Monte (quirk of the eyebrows, here);

and a church of the Madonna del Parto. This latter is very interesting historically. It is believed to have originally been Etruscan tombs, which the Romans then used as a Mithraeum, before it was converted to a Christian church in the 13th Century. We had quickly to dash off to get a ticket (€5 each) in order to be allowed in, for a maximum of seven minutes, with a small group. The interior is fascinating,

something not immediately obvious from the picture above; but on the walls and in one place on the ceiling are some original frescoes.

whose fragility is what sets the seven-minute limit for any group visit.

Well, after that, there was nothing for it but to find some lunch; unfortunately the recommended Il Localetto was not open for Sunday lunch but we ended up on a terrace outside the restaurant Il Anfiteatro, which has a fine view of the Etruscan tombs but not of the amphitheatre; it also has no gin, or even Campari for a spritz, but the food was decent, and fortified us sufficiently for a walk back up to the town square for a gelato or two.

We had A Moment when we arrived back at our B&B: there was Jane’s suitcase; but mine was not beside it. This had all the hallmarks of a catastrophe, as our supply of Twining’s finest Earl Grey is being transported around Italy in my baggage. However, S-cape’s team were paying attention to their WhatsApp feed when Jane got on their, erm, case, and my bag and the all-important teabags arrived within 20 minutes; relief and tea all round.

So, that was our Sweep round Sutri

and, for such a small place, it was very interesting.

We’ve taken a couple of days to complete the “official” leg of the Via which gets one from Vetralla to Sutri; and the next couple of days will be dedicated to covering one more. The leg is from Sutri to Campagnano and is around 25km; but we will cover just a dozen or so of them tomorrow and rest up in Monterosi before pressing on to Campagnano. As far as we can tell, the breakfast here is entirely self-service out of the kitchenette, so we have the option of starting out really early to avoid the heat of the day. Join us in due course to see whether this is what we actually did.

Day 4 – Siq, and ye shall find

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Wednesday 18 May 2022 – It was never really one of my bucket list items to be the first to breakfast at a big international hotel, but we achieved it anyway this morning. The alarm went off at 0500 and we arrived just in time to push open the breakfast room door and ask them whether they were open. Fortunately, they were and we had a swift but satisfying breakfast (Twinings Earl Grey included) and were a couple of minutes early to meet Ali, our guide for the day.

The Mövenpick is literally just across the road from the Petra visitor centre, so we were on our way into the site within minutes. To give some context to the day’s peregrinations, let me give some idea of size and distance. Here’s a map of the site.

Something I hadn’t internalised is that the site is 27 square miles. The thing that everyone knows about from the Indiana Jones film is The Treasury, which is a third in from the right. Our destination today was the Monastery – top left. In all, including some great detours that Ali knew about, we walked 12 miles and ascended over 500 metres (sorry for the mixed units, but you’re all international folk so you can work it out, can’t you?).

Like Marwan did in Amman, Ali gave us a huge amount of historical, geographical and cultural information, only parts of which have stuck, but I’ll try to include some of what he told us.

The first thing he kept mentioning was the Nabatean Kingdom. I confess that I’d never heard the term before, and I was of course too embarrassed to confess this, so I looked it up. The Nabataeans were one of several nomadic Bedouin tribes that roamed the Arabian Desert in search of pasture and water for their herds. They emerged as a distinct civilization and political entity between the 4th and 2nd centuries BC, with their kingdom centered around a loosely controlled trading network that brought considerable wealth and influence across the ancient world. They were allies of Rome, annexed into the Roman Empire by Emperor Trajan (trajuced?) in 106 AD. This explains much of the Roman bits and bobs we came across on our visit today, although there was much other pagan content in their culture and practices as well as later Christian influence. Petra was the capital of the Nabateans.

After a short walk from the visitor centre, you come to the location of the formal gate to Petra, though the arch that once signified it no longer stands, as it (along with masses of other buildings and monuments) has fallen prey to the multiple earthquakes that have shaken things up, or possibly down, over the last two thousand years. However, there are a couple of things that mark the gate, the most striking of which is the Bab Al Siq, the gateway to the Siq.

May I ask you, please, to take note of the moon in the first of these pictures, which signifies that the time at this time was 0637, exactly the sort of hour you’ll only find me awake when I’m on holiday.

One of the reasons we started so early was to try to avoid the worst of the day’s heat. The second was to try to get ahead of the crowds, which we largely did, although we weren’t entirely alone as we walked along the Siq.

(There are many enterprising locals who will offer you camel rides or horse rides if you want to take the weight off your feet. Some of them have a little problem understanding the words “no, thank you”, but not to an upsetting degree.)

Then you enter the Siq, a narrow gorge resulting from natural splits in the mountains which was the main entrance for religious people (the tradesmen’s entrance was round the back). Down each side of the Siq run water channels

which work quite well, given that the entire thing runs downhill. Quite a considerable amount of time and effort has been spent in damming and maintaining the various water courses to keep them (a) running and (b) not drowning people, as there is a potential for heavy rain to bring huge amounts of water into Petra.

On the way along the Siq, Ali pointed out various phenomena, both natural and man-made. There are many niches to various deities, some of which were permanently resident and had recognised symbols representing them

and some were left empty for visitors to install their own gods. There is a natural formation which looks a little like an elephant (actually I think it looks more like a manatee, but apparently I’m in a minority, here),

and there are other man-made carvings such as this, which if you look carefully, can be recognised as a camel and a man, albeit somewhat eroded by wind and rain.

After just over a kilometre, you begin to get a glimpse of something vast and man-made

and so you soon arrive at The Treasury, the largest structure in Petra.

Having started out early, we’d been very lucky that there were relatively few people there, but the place was still afflicted by people who simply couldn’t bear to have a picture of the noble historic works of ancient civilisation without them gurning in front of it.

Ali pointed out some details on the Treasury. For example, up the side you can see marks where the original workmen installed ladders so that they could work on the structure from the top downwards.

At the top of the centrepiece is a funerary urn which was reputed to contain a Pharaoh’s treasure. So, obviously, you shoot bullets at it to try to open it.

The next landmark is the street of façades. This is a street which, amazingly enough, has façades carved into its walls.

As you walk along you will notice many caves carved into the walls. We took a look at one of the more colourful ones

but inside it’s pretty much like all of the others,

a living space with cavities carved into the walls for ashes, or sometimes actual remains. This bears out a comment from Suhir, our guide in Jerash, who rather dismissively said that Petra was basically a necropolis. I think maybe he was a little sensitive about being a guide to a place which, although impressive, didn’t quite match Petra for charisma. But he has a point; virtually every cave was a living space plus storage for the dead; and some of the other structures were just tombs, albeit quite fancy ones, like these.

At this point, Ali took us off the main drag to show us some of the lesser-visited parts of the site and thus demonstrated to value of having a guide, as we wouldn’t have found these things by ourselves. Firstly, a couple of great views over a part of the site, including (in the first picture) a prime minister’s tomb;

and a superb view over something that I hadn’t realised (until today) existed in Petra – a Roman Theatre

(although, as we now know after our tour of Amman, this was more in the Greek style, being sculpted from the surroundings rather than standalone); secondly, some great caves

including a spectacularly coloured one – truly breathtaking.

This one was used for hospitality by a Bedouin who had been born in such a cave (but lived in a nearby Bedouin village). We took tea with him whilst Ali snuck off for a quick smoke.

Thirdly, we got a surprise Church, not something one might have expected on a site such as Petra. It was probably built around the fifth century AD, thus making it Byzantine in period, and has been only slightly restored after being devastated in various earthquakes.

On either side it has – brace yourselves! – mosaics! Yay!

(These are depictions of beasts known across the Roman Empire.)

Finally, Ali led us to a fantastic view over the Great Temple.

At the right hand end of the picture is a three-pillar gate to this end of the city. As we walked down towards it, some reconstruction of Roman Guard shenanigans was under way.

And that marked the end of the guided part of our day. So we bade Ali farewell, and embarked forthwith on Phase II – the ascent to The Monastery, billed as climbing over 800 steps to the top of a mountain.

It’s a little awkward and/or steep in a couple of places, but the trail is clear, and all one has to do is to toil upwards, avoiding some oncoming traffic occasionally

(you will be offered donkey rides incessantly as you go up. One of the things that I hadn’t expected was the ubiquity of retail opportunities as people try to sell you souvenirs and handicraft items. See later).

The easy availability of donkey rides means a liberal amount of donkey shit on the steps, so you have to watch your step. We came across this lady who appeared to be cleaning it up

but since there was still a vast amount of the stuff around she was either totally ineffectual or was simply collecting it for fuel.

There’s some great scenery to be viewed on the way up.

and, as I say, several retail opportunities, where one is hailed as a great buddy or asked to support the families.

We made the mistake of falling into conversation and drinking tea with this lady, who turned out to be a great salesperson; we didn’t get away without paying really quite a lot of money for a couple of items, but it would have been awkward just to leave. She was later seen in action with others.

I would recommend smiling and being firm with a “no, thank you” unless you want to get involved with a sales transaction. The attitudes are not aggressive, but sometimes a little persistent.

Then, before we knew it

we’d reached the top. It didn’t look altogether ancient and monastic, to be honest.

but then we turned the corner….

Ali had mentioned that you could walk past the Monastery for a fantastic view over the far valley. I wasn’t too sure of the route until we looked around a bit.

So we followed the signs and arrived at the viewpoint and, well…

It was precipitous, mind.

We headed back down to the Monastery and I took advantage of another route promising to be the best view in the world. Frankly, it wasn’t, but en route, I got a brilliant angle on the Monastery.

After all that clambering about, it was time to head down, and we reached the bottom without any mishap. It was getting quite hot by this stage, and some people were suffering a bit as they walked up (frankly, I think that some of them were showing more courage than common sense). Some people cheated.

Our original plan had been to have lunch when we reached the bottom, but we decided instead to head back to the hotel, rest for a bit and then get a late lunch. All this was prior to the excitement of the evening which was to see “Petra By Night”.

Something that I hadn’t appreciated until we started the walk back was quite how far below the level of the hotel we were. It was a long, hot and relentless uphill pull for the best part of three miles, and as far as I can tell the hotel’s altitude is not far below that of the Monastery. There were a couple of diverting moments on the way back.

and the Treasury was considerably more crowded than it had been at 7am.

It was now just about midday and the sun was (a) very hot and (b) directly overhead, so my hope of finding some shade from the high walls of the Siq was ill-founded.

so we sweated and stumbled our way all the way back to the hotel, pausing only to take a photo of the Roman guards at the gate.

The rest and lunch at the hotel were very welcome indeed. We treated ourselves to some proper western food, and the hotel burger and chips were a transport of delight for me.

At 6pm, Saeed delivered our Petra By Night tickets, and we set out some moments before its official start time and joined the queue in the souk by the visitor centre. There is some entertaining, and probably borderline illegal marketing at work for some of the boutiques there.

I bet they didn’t ask Harrison Ford for his permission. There was quite a crowd for the event and we started shuffling along down the track to the Siq

and it was all going quite nicely until people started using torches and other lights, and talking loudly (mostly rubbish) which completely ruined the atmosphere that we infer the organisers wanted by lighting the way by candle light. Long story short, we eventually got to the Treasury where lots of lights were arrayed and people were sitting waiting for the show to begin.

The show, or at least the bit we stayed for, was music with a strong local cultural content – an Arab flute and a rebaba, an Arab one-string instrument. The flute playing was OK, but the rebaba was accompanied by shrieking vocals and with appalling audio quality, so we left. The walk back was much nicer, because it was much less plagued by fuckwits with torches.

And so we come to the end of a long, long day. We’ve walked over 15 miles, ascended and descended 750 metres and we have to get up in six hours to basically do it all over again, although we’ll be visiting a different part of the Petra site. So stay tuned to see whether we survive….

Day 1 – Northern Jordan: Umm Qais, Ajloun and Jerash

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Sunday 15 May 2022 – Five hours’ sleep was all we got, but that didn’t seem too much of a problem as we got up and headed down for what turned out to be a perfectly decent international hotel breakfast, with a target of meeting Said at 9am.

The itinerary for the day involved heading right up to the north-west of Jordan, some 120km and a 2-hour drive. Many useful things happened during that time: a rapid education into a more detailed understanding of the highly variable quality of Jordanian road surfaces (made more so by the apparently random insertion by The Powers That Be of some pretty aggressive speed bumps); the driving philosophy among the locals, which appears to rely heavily on the “Insh’Allah” school of self-preservation; and small repayment on my sleep debt.

The bits of Jordan we saw revealed a country with charming and hospitable natives, exceedingly crappy road surfaces, a complete disregard for the rules of the road and a pervasive roadside rubbish problem consisting mainly of plastic bags littering the verges. (I realise that we in the UK haven’t got much grounds for moral superiority here, but it was noticeable.). The speed bump thing appears to be a test of concentration for the driver, as the bumps are sometimes mild and sometimes aggressive, placed without any connection to reality and surrounded by some pretty impressive potholes at times. The net effect, when combined with the locals’ attitude to speed limits, road positioning and courtesy, is to make everyone cram the anchors on a few yards before each speed bump and then accelerate off as fast as possible once having established that tyres and suspension are still OK. It doesn’t do much for fuel economy or passenger comfort but it stops life on the road being dull. And it didn’t detract in any way from our enjoyment on the day, because, Insh’Allah, we weren’t involved in any accidents.

So, a couple of hours after we started out, we arrived at Umm Qais, or, more specifically the proximate ruins of the ancient Gadara. Compared to Jerash, which we visited later, it’s a compact site – no need for a dedicated guide, as Said showed us around and talked about the history as we went. The site’s museum has on display some lovely mosaics

and fine statuary

which have been extracted from the ruins. It also has some wonderful displays of the intricate pottery that the people from the Graeco-Roman period were capable of

as well as some considerable ability to mould massive stone into useful things such as doors.

There are the remains of ancient shopping arcades

a very impressive Roman theatre

and many slabs of remarkably well-preserved carved marble to marvel at.

From the top of the site, you can see the Golan Heights

and the Sea of Galilee

which gives a clear indication of how near the site is to the border with Israel.

Having got to pretty much the top of Jordan, we then turned south, and our next stop was the historic castle at a town called Ajloun (reached via a stop-start drive through the traffic congestion of the rather scruffy city of Irdib. Jordanian traffic congestion isn’t as bad as Indian traffic congestion, but that doesn’t mean I’d be prepared to risk my bodywork by driving around there). However, en route we got a few more sidelights into Jordanian life. For example, we were in peak chickpea season. Said was given a bunch by a mate in the Umm Qais car park

and we saw several pickups loaded to the gills with harvestings.

Roadside fruit stalls are commonplace. Some of them look well-established and flourishing

but others not so much.

These stalls are clearly a good way to get produce cheaper than normal markets, but the corollary of this is the need for alertness for people screaming to a halt unexpectedly in front of you to pick up a few loquats or whatever.

Anyway….

You can see Ajloun Castle from a distance away –

yes, there it is on the top of the hill.

It’s a massive slab of masonry, originally started by Saladdin in the 12th Century as part of his successful attempts to get rid of the Crusaders. Since it sits at the highest point hereabouts, it gives a great view over the surrounding countryside if you happen to be on the lookout for marauding Lionhearts.

It is very photogenic.

so a pleasure to walk around, as well as being quite well described by information boards. There was one thing that gave me pause:

“Tourism Police”? “I’m sorry, sir, but I must arrest you for wearing Bermuda shorts that aren’t garish enough. And those sunglasses! Couldn’t you afford Oakleys?”

In the ~~car park~~ area outside where cars and buses were randomly strewn about there was a rather lovely coffee stop, which underlined the hospitable nature of Jordanian life. It was clear that Said was well-known by the people running it and we were invited for some delicious cardamom coffee served by an imposing but charming chap called Nazih.

And then it was time for lunch, which we took in Jerash. Well after time, actually, since it was nearly 4pm by the stage. Said took us to a restaurant called Artemis, obviously a popular tourist destination, judging by the number of tourist buses in the car park and from the bread-making theatre going on outside.

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It’s rather a neat way of serving customers with the bread that accompanies their meal. The restaurant offers a very tasty buffet meal and there’s a lot of room inside so it was easy to get a decent lunch.

Jerash is a large city and it contains a very substantial architectural site featuring neolithic, Graeco-Roman, Byzantine and early Muslim influences. It’s sufficiently substantial to warrant having a guide specially to take you round the site; ours was called Suhir and he did a very good job of conveying the history of the place. Some of the Roman ruins are the largest remaining in the world, eclipsing even those in Rome – the most striking example is the Forum.

The site is really quite large, with the main drag being over 800m long. There are any number of fascinating historical details to be seen en route, for example the tracks left by the chariots on the main street.

There are smaller details to be seen: recesses which held olive oil lamps

manhole covers enabling access to the drainage system

and some phenomenal mosaics.

There’s the inevitable tourist attraction, of course,

but the chap was still charming even when we didn’t want to buy anything.

At the north end of the main street is the colonnaded road leading to the Damascus Gate

(the main gates are all named in recognition of the countries that border Jordan – Syria to the north, Palestine to the west, Egypt to the south and Iraq to the east).

At the north end of the site is a Roman Theatre,

But the highlight of the day happened as the sun was sinking and we were walking towards the other Roman Theatre, near the Forum. As we neared it, we heard a completely unexpected sound and so we went in to see what was going on.

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On investigation, it turned out to be a Jordanian bagpiper whose only English (apart from the word “welcome”) was to emphasis how he’d been to Swindon and to the Edinburgh Tattoo. Jane got him to play the Skye Boat Song (and told him its history) and he then jammed a few other numbers whilst a little impromptu Scottish dancing went on around him. I’ll spare Jane’s blushes by not publishing that video clip, but it was surprisingly affecting to have this confluence of very different cultures in such a remarkable setting.

This was the end of the day’s tourism, and we headed back to where Said was waiting to whisk us back to our hotel. A couple of apples, a couple of dates, couple of gins and a mug of Twinings Earl Grey have been the necessary fuel to feed this blog posting. It’s been a long, intense and enjoyable day; a full-on introduction into the sort of thing we can expect over the coming weeks as we travel round Jordan. I hope you want to come along for the rest of the ride.