After a good breakfast ( our host has his own bacon slicer and coffee machine! ), we are late starting and within minutes our T shirts are wet with sweat. We pass big houses with manicured gardens, high fences, swimming pools, hot tubs and barking dogs. The road is being resurfaced and we stop to chat with one of the workers.
Suddenly we are back in the countryside again with fields of grass and grain and flocks of sheep.
Notice boards at the side of the road promise us the ruins of the ancient city of Veii, the capital of a tribe that that lost out to Rome after a 10 year siege. It has clearly been excavated and then allowed to disappear again under the corn fields.
Round the corner, past some rock tombs below a waterfall, is a pool that provides welcome relief for hot feet, although we swiftly retreat when small leeches start to appear.
The long hot uphill to La Storta brings us onto busy roads with traffic and piles of uncollected decomposing rubbish, there is apparently a long running dispute between the rubbish collectors and their employers.
We stop for ravioli in a taverna and Tony , for the first time in his life, is heard asking for more water! Just as we are finishing, 3 Australians, who we haven’t seen for a fortnight, roll in for a late lunch. We had thought we would be seeing lots of pilgrims in the final stages of the walk but on the contrary they are few and far between.