Tag Archives: Tourism

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 1 – Altopascio to San Miniato; a long, long walk

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Monday 12 May 2025 – Right, then. This is it, the start of the Long Walk To Rome. As ever with these organised walks, day 1 seems always to be a bastard, and on paper, this one added further credibility to that assertion – 29km in all, a distance which we’d walked as we practised, but this time we would be toting backpacks and there would be hills. The last couple of kilometres, particularly, featured a climb of 150m, in itself not a huge amount, but coming after all those km made it seem a daunting prospect.

We would start the walk not in Lucca, but in Altopascio, some 20km away. To get there we would take the train and the earliest sensible candidate train was at 0831 if we were to breakfast at our hotel. That’s what we did – again, not at all an inspiring breakfast, but at least it provided calories for fuel for the day. The Hotel Rex is brilliantly located for station – it’s about 80 metres away.

so (having bought our tickets in advance) we were promptly on Platform 3

The lines are in constant use, but it looks like they run through a field!

and the train arrived fairly promptly after its scheduled time. Altopascio was the first stop, about 10 minutes later

and we used the very helpful app provided by the local agency who organised our itinerary, S-Cape, to find our way to our official start point through the town, which has some attractive corners.

A ripple of excitement passed through us as we spotted out first official Via Francigena signpost

so we used that and the town square for the only type of selfie I will tolerate – the start or end of a long walk.

And then we were off! At first along the road

past the local cemetery

and then on to woodland tracks.

where we encountered other pellegrinos – a pair of French ladies and a Dutch lady walking solo. Since our pace and theirs were very similar, it was a little awkward at times as we would go past, but then pause to take a photo and be overtaken. All very good natured, of course, but I would have preferred for us to have been alone whilst we got into the rhythm of walking decent distances again. No matter, we soon separated and were able to carry on at our own paces.

The signposting for this section was very good, if at times a tad ramshackle

As well as the signpost, you can see an example of the concrete waymarks which dot the route.

The scenery was pleasant and rural

and the track eventually led on to a section of cobbled road originally several hundred years old

which, as well as being uphill, was occasionally tricky underfoot. But we made it OK to the town of Galleno, about 9km in to the walk, where we had planned our first coffee stop. Very welcome it was, too.

Galleno features some nice properties. We were quite taken by this pair of houses,

the left-hand one of which had a rather nice trompe l’oeuil picture on it.

There was some mystery artwork on offer, too.

We pressed on through woodland, and every so often there would be a roar of aircraft engines as an aeroplane flew over.

It turned out to be a C130 Hercules. We weren’t sure why, but it flew over us several times as we walked along; perhaps the pilot was practising circuits and bumps, but I couldn’t work out where that might be based.

Our (OK, Jane’s) original plan had been to have two stops during the day, one at Galleno for coffee and one at Fucechhio, as these were about 10 and 20km into the overall walk. However, as we approached Ponte al Cappiano, about half way between the two (and halfway along the day’s route), it was 1pm and we thought it would be a good idea to stop for lunch. The first restaurant we came to, called Cerris, served us salads, chips and beer, which was exactly what we needed. As we were lunching, the three ladies we’d passed earlier came in to eat, and we also had a brief chat with a proactively friendly American lady called Kim, who was walking bits of the route with a British friend. As we finished our lunch a group of British lady bicigrinos (doing the route on bicycles) came by and so we were able to offer them our table.

During the morning, although we’d only seen the three ladies I mentioned earlier, we were overtaken by plenty of bicigrinos, all men. Up to the point where we met Kim’s chap, I had been the only male walker we’d seen on the route; nominative determinism hard at work again!

Ponte al Cappiano is an attractive place

and, unsurprisingly, features a bridge

which crosses the Canale Usciana. Our route took us beside the canal on a sort of levee

whose nicely trimmed grassy path soon  degraded into a narrrow track which often had us wading through waist-high grass. The scenery was nice enough,

but the going was (a) somewhat tiresome and (b) getting very hot. I suppose the temperature can’t have been much higher than 20C, but in unshaded sunshone it felt a lot hotter. After a while, we got a good glimpse of Fucecchio

where we fondly hoped we could find refreshment, because we were getting fed up with the incessant wading through grass.  One has to go up through the town

and, having climbed up to its centre, it seemed that everything was shut, which was a disappointment. However, once we got down to the other side of town, we found, to our delight, a bar which was open so that we could have a rest and a cold drink, both of which were sorely needed by this stage.

The way out of the town passed an interesting property

but then once again found its way on the levee

where we got a decent view of our eventual destination, San Miniato, and an idea of how much we’d have to climb to get there. As before, there were passages through swathes of waist-high grass

and we got a closer view of San Miniato.

San Miniato has a lower town and an upper town. Guess which one our hotel is in, go on, why don’t you.

We passed a bodega which clearly was interested in getting some pilgrim business

and, at 28km into the walk, started the climb to upper San Miniato.

There were some great views to be had as we walked.

and we eventually hit the outskirts of the town, which has a wide variety of twinning operations in place.

It’s clearly a place with a lot of history, and a lot of impressive chunks of masonry;

our hotel, the eponymous Hotel San Miniato, has a very impressive frontage, as well.

We arrived a few minutes after 6pm, having covered just over 30km and feeling very tired indeed. It was all we could do to grab a cup of tea in the bar (we provided tea bags and mugs to ensure it was up to snuff) before basically collapsing for the rest of the evening and night. So I fear that I’ll not be able to regale you with further shots of San Miniato, as the plan is to head out promptly tomorrow. The reason for that is that Day 2, while not being an utter bastard like today, is still 24km and with a substantial climb at the end. Worse, there are no places to stop for coffee, so we will have to get ourselves some kind of packed lunch in the town and feed ourselves as we go. This is the first time on any of our long walking holidays travels that we’ve had to deal with this tragic turn of events, so wish us luck and come back to find out how we got on, won’t you?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another Lucca round

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Sunday 11 May 2025 – Our last day of “freedom” before the serious walking starts, and the local variant of Mother’s Day here, which meant we (the two ladies, that is… some assumptions being made here!) benefited from some extra chocolate at breakfast.

The breakfast available was, otherwise, rather woeful; particularly absent was any hint of fresh fruit. Still, we fuelled up on what we could find and made our way out into a delightfully sunny day.

We had some formal objectives for our wandering – a couple of towers, a couple of churches and, particularly, a lunch in the Piazza del Amfiteatro which we hoped would be a Nice one.

Selecting our activities based on when the light might be best for photography, we started with the Torre Guignigi, which is unique in having holm oak trees growing out of the top of it.

It is one of only two medieval towers surviving in Lucca where once there were more than one hundred.

There are over 200 steps to the top, but despite this it is a popular tourist site

and it offers some fine views over the city.

We felt we’d earned a coffee break before we walked along to our next place of interest. This was the Church of San Michele in Foro, which boasts a very impressive facade

but which is a little unusual in that it’s clearly more a place for meditation and prayer than a place to listen to the word of God – there are no pews, and the space is entirely open.

By this stage, we knew that the cathedral would be open for visitors, and so headed that way, passing, as we did, the 12th century church of of San Giusto, which, like several churches in these parts, has a very striking facade.

The cathedral, the Church of St. Martin, is, as one would expect, an imposing building, again with a wonderful facade (the picture below was taken later in the day when the sun illuminated it better).

Inside is the sort of space one would expect in a significant cathedral

lavishly embellished

with some impressive marble work

and some lovely stained glass

some of which was throwing wonderful colours from the sunshine.

There’s a sort of “temple within a temple”

which, under normal circumstances, would house the Volto Santo, the “Holy Face of Lucca”, an 8-foot tall carving of Christ on the Cross

 

Picture courtesy of Wikipedia

but at the moment contains just scaffolding, as the figure has been removed for restoration work, and can be seen displayed in a workshop setting in the church.

Inside the cathedral is a statue of the eponymous “St. Martin and the Beggar”

showing the saint using his sword to cut his cloak in two in order to give half to the beggar. This is the original and there’s a copy now on the facade of the cathedral,

looking, it has to be said, in need of the ministrations of someone with a power washer and a long ladder.

With over an hour left until our lunch appointment, there was clearly time for those of us with courage, fortitude and good quads to climb the other tower of note in Lucca, the Torre del Ore, the suitably-named Tower of the Clock.

It turned out that I was the only one of the three of us prepared to make the journey, and it turned out to be rather a lovely experience; in striking contrast to the Torre Guignigi, I was the only person in the tower, apart from the gatekeeper, who charged me €8 to climb the steps. At the top I had the entire platform all to myself

and could enjoy the lovely views over the city

including a great view of the Torre Guignigi.

Whilst I was climbing the tower, Jane and Caroline relaxed at the near(ish)by Gorilla Craft Beer and Cafe, where I eventually joined them so that we could sample some Italian gins as an agreeable prelude to lunch. That was taken back in the Piazza del Amfiteatro, at a very good restaurant called Sotto Sotto. We were well looked after by Eugene and eventually tottered back to our hotel so that we could get some rest and prepare for the forthcoming rigours.

Tomorrow is Day 1 of The Walk; we will walk to Rome, and Caroline will join us for the first week, as far as Siena. The significant datum is that we have nearly 30km to cover tomorrow, after a short  train journey to where we will start, in Altopascio. We’re all feeling a little bit daunted by the thought of the distance we have to cover, and you’ll have to keep in touch with these pages to see how we get on, won’t you?