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.

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