32km AGAIN!! flat but we can see hills to the south. The rain gradually stops and the sun comes out.
We share the neat and well provided for ostello with an Italian from Turino. He seems quite clued up with organising himself for walking. We discover he walked back to Italy from Bali via the Silk Road more or less. Two years. Now he wants to see something of Italy! We spend an interesting evening swapping travel stories.
The cafe across the road provides breakfast and we are off across the flat lands on the south side of the river that will not be mentioned. The irrigation system is not as advanced pumps and lengths of hose snake across the fields. Hills loom in the south we turn from them racing across the plains first southern East and North crossing several small fiumes and torrentes. The good news is that coffee and later beer present themselves at regular intervals. We eat oranges outside a closed church with a benevolent looking creator in terracotta on the gable end.
The highlight of the day is turning down a grit track to a ford with partly submerged stepping stones and mud at each side. The Torrente caused by yesterday’s rain is subsiding. There is an Italian film crew awaiting our crossing. We hope we put on a good show.
Eventually we get to the unpronounceable town beginning with F.As we cross the footbridge, our Italian film friends are waiting to film us crossing under a Via Francigena sign,no explanation is given and no contracts signed we just wave to them as if they were long lost cousins It has a modestly interesting not very gothic church, We have a beer in town as we have now done the planned 28km with two more to go out of town (eastwards, why are we going east? to loop around and go up a SW running valley across the northern Appennines). We find our accomodation an Agro Tourismo looks quite plush! They have never heard of us. We try to explain we are film stars and will be on TV soon. It is no good we eventually realise it is the wrong Agro Tourismo. Our booking is just up the road. You guessed it another 2km! But happily no more fords.