Author: Tim Digger

32km flat
We get directed by the mayor to a grand little restaurant a km out of town. It is not obvious when we arrive but our waiter is also arriving and ushers us in though unmarked doors. It is not quite empty but has a large car park, of the three other patrons two leave soon after our arrival but we get an excellent seafood meal involving pasta shellfish fish, cephalopods and chips. Complete with wine 20 euros a head. But the waiter goes to ask the other patron how much he should charge. He then gets to his feet to work the credit card machine. He is the boss. We walk back to town after a slightly surreal experience.
In the morning we are off to the ferry 3km away. The three Germans in the hostel are off before us, no stereotyping. But wait kindly to tell us where to get our timbros. We find the pontoon for the ferry down the bank as expected. The Po here is maybe twice the size of the Severn at Worcester in UK.
We wait there is no sign of the boat. Thoughts of Domani come to mind. As if to rub it in a woodpecker flits across the 200m of gently but steadily flowing Po. A cuckoo mocks from the far bank, a few more million gallons of water slide by. Tony communicates with the mayor who booked the ferry for us and the non Italian non English speaking Germans. A reply returns, Charon is busy he may be here at 11am. We elect to walk.
A very long walk down the Ciclovia Po ensues. It is some 10m above the surrounding fields and is a levee. Snow or more likely seeds from the multiple plantations of poplar trees falls freely and covers some fields. A fluviometer on the side shows a flood in 2000 almost over the top. There are few buildings along the bank except for one cafe at a summer campsite, open for coffee and cake, much needed. The only other bright spot is a sight of two hares in a nearby field.
Eventually,we finally cross the Po across an endless bridge into Piacenza.
We have been promised one of the most beautiful squares in Italy, but are it is raining and we are are tired so it’s delights escape us, yes there two large equestrian statues and some arches but……..
We refuel in an adjacent cafe before the final 5 k push through the city and out through the detritus of out of town shopping opportunities until we find our hostel for the night.
We get the keys from a local bar and promise to return later.
The hostel is good and and the water in the shower is warm even if hot means cold and cold means hot.
Later in the bar we worry about the cat we saw stranded on a high window ledge at last night’s hostel
Did the mayor manage a rescue?????

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17km not quite flat. We leave Lombardy for Emilia-Romagna
The fair was finished by 8pm and we found one Italian Oriental restaurant open with a good value 10euro fixed menu. In the morning the first of several cafes is open opposite Father Antonio’s parish rooms, where a good night’s sleep was had. Today is short to get nearly to the ferry across the Po, so we idle our way from cafe to bar across the fertile flood plains of the Po.
The second cafe lady obviously enjoys decorating our cappucini but the bar of the day award goes to the lady whose tapas include some sizeable chunks of panetoni made with orange peel and a toilet with a Plummer. We get a bag of panetoni to take away, and the bar has advertising from such illustrious names as Tennants from Scotland and Guinness from Ireland. But only Heineken on tap. This bar is spotted by the eagle nosed Tony and appears closed or defunct at first. All agree that the large pipe cleaners hanging in the doorway are a substantial clue.
The only other notable building en route is the Cusani castle in Chignolo Po, this had been in the family for five centuries. Now the lawyers have it it is a legal centre!
We reach the modern well appointed pilgrim hostel in Orio Litta and settle in quickly, the mayor arrives to check all is good and invites us to the running and cycling event passing through the town this afternoon. He speaks good English and stands chatting for a while with his little dog. We hopefully have him notifying Charon for tomorrow and he tells us of a restaurant with a pilgrim menu. The kitchen here is bijou!

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27km flat
We are quickly out in fields from the edge of Pavia and start the long slightly tedious day. Coffee and beer appear at expected intervals feet are placed one in front of other. St Leonardo provides great cappucini. In spite of the Italian reputation in this respect not all are good.
The day continues with failure to enter the church in San Giacomo Della Cerreta which is supposed to have good frescoes, and a long walk around a large quarry.
However Belgioioso, Ray can even pronounce it, is good with some great tapas with the beer from our oriental hosts. It is strange that a surprisingly high proportion of cafe proprietors in this area seem Vietnamese or similar. The town has a good castle with castellations and a drawbridge. The bank frequented by Betsy and Ray is also unusual.
The Tolkienesque Torre de Negre has a sort of Baradur tower but it is alas a modern utility.
We finally cross the Torrente Olona and weave our way across more fields of Acacia in full bloom which has been a feature for several days.
Our lodging tonight is in the hall adjacent to the church. A fair is setting up outside shortly after we arrive!

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25km Flat And WET.
We rise and since it’s Sunday the bad boys were not up. So breakfast was delayed for 5km to a café crammed with the local post mass crowd. Just down the road still in Gropello Carolli there is a church dedicated to St Rocco our saint with the dog and the bad leg. Mass is still in progress so we limit our visit to the outside. Though we would probably have been welcome.
In the evening yesterday we ate with the lads they had cooked and shared their pasta and fish fingers with us. It was great and very welcome if a bit loud with them shouting Italian names at us, the only one any of us recognised was a motor cyclist by Ray why you may well ask. No one reacted to the name of a famous mafioso!
Having met some other pilgrims in the second cafe in Villanova d’Ardeghi we walk a while with a one paced Dutchman discussing Brexit. But eventually leave him behind in the rain when we encounter a very wet path down the bank of the river Ticino. We get a beer out of the rain in a bar, which would be in a great position if not for the rain.
Continuing down the Ticino we see Common Terns. This comes as a suprise to us but apparently they nest communally up the Po which we cross in 2days time and into which the Ticino flows.
Crossing the Ticino into Pavia seems a major event across the reconstructed Ponte Coperto bridge a copy of the 14thC covered bridge bombed by the allies in WW2. A bride is having wedding photos taken on it in the rain. We feel for her, but .there is a pizzaria just at the far end into which we fall gratefully for lunch.
On exit Tim spots that the gellateria next door does timbros. It is enough of an excuse for Betsy who is feeling a bit gellato deficient. Two half price gellato (pilgrim rates they normally offer water but all felt there was enough outside) and we are on our way through Pavia dropping in on the Basilica with some fine stone carvings of various ages.
We find the apartment easily rented for the night via Booking.com. We use the hot shower gratefully and are amused it has now stopped raining!

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22km flat.
We were not the only people in the abbey lastnight two couples Italian and Canadian arrived later. One of them, Alessandro will be an Hospitalero further down the Via Francigena in August.
We leave in a cool morning after breakfast and scoot across the slightly damp field which warm gradually to reveal the usual herons and butterflies. We get to Remondo a nice little place with a café with cappucini with coaco and are then ushered into the church open at the time. Someone is cleaning, the ceiling frescoes are very good better than in many much bigger churches. We march on across fields and canals to Tremollo (not the 60s band) and are greeted by a TV star! Tony recognizes Carlos from the BBC program on the Via Francigena. He pedals of with our credentials and soon returns with them stamped and certificates and badges for passing through Tremollo. The force is indeed with us. He declined a beer with us and pedals off, every man should have a hobby! We have to see the church in this place it is a bit dark but with four bishops in silver behind the alter. We leave them all there not even the fourth is with us.
But Ray gets an email from his daughter Rosie in Sydney. She is in a Star Wars bar with a Blue Light Sabre we presume a cocktail. Modern communication is amazing.
Not many canals later we get a pizza for lunch in Garlasco and are unimpressed by the Municipio in the main square. Another couple of km and we arrive at an old mill, the Exodus Foundation a donativo hostel and institution for young offenders. Tim finds a regime of cold showers difficult! Betsy talks to those in charge and the rest get pleasant warm water.

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17km still very flat. No one complains of lack of sleep in the morning and we set off from behind the police station quite early. The bell is tolling at 6am. Last night we were unable to find any cutlery, Tony without even a spork was obliged to use a serving spoon. After eating we discovered the cutlery draw hidden in the table!
This is another good natural history day. We see more Ibis, Little Egrets, various herons including a Squacco Heron who sits to be photographed by Tony and Betsy. Tim recognises it as seen before on Malta. Butterflies including one we finally identify as a female Large Copper which makes Ray research the butterfly from yesterday which was probably a male Large Copper , these extinct in Britain since 1851 due to fenland habitat loss though Dock plants it’s food are still common enough. A hoopoe flies across and poses on a gutter for just long enough for everyone to recognise it. All in an excellent day for wild life.
We get coffee on time and beer later, and a confirmation that we are welcome at the Abbey of St Albino this afternoon. We believe we will overnight here. St Albinus was an abbot in Angers France 5th century CE. We arrive and cower in the large porch while rain starts and thunder crashes. We become concerned about the adequacy of our beliefs. But at three o’clock the door opens and we are shown in to a large room with some camp beds. Doubt still seems to exist as to whether we are the only guests tonight.
Thunder roils on, two more Italian pilgrims arrive. We visit the chapel next door there is a statue there we presume of St Albinus (from Brittany patron saint of pirate attack. Against!) but no it is St Antonius with a pig at his feet patron of domesticated animals, quite why he has been donated by the local Lions club we don’t know.

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Farewell to the mountains.
We are soon out in the fields again along a gravel track raised above the surrounding ground. The Alps have disappeared in a haze of cloud, rain is forecast for later. Fewer fields are flooded but we see an ibis flying past, lots of Little Egrets and Grey Herons,and a Black Headed Night Heron a summer migrant wintering in Africa. Betsy claims the blackheaded night heron for yesterday but had not got round to checking photos after yesterday’s rather long day. When verification is carried out she has a fine photo of a female Stilt. Fritillaries and Little Copper butterflies flit about, frogs and Nightingales singing in the bushes abound.
We charge into Palestro the halfway point and get various drinks after seeing the tower with pronounced castellations but without machiolations the only remaining bit of the castle of the Visconti family from medieval times. Shortly after leaving town we are in Lombardy.
Once again the multi level nature of the irrigation system of ditches becomes apparent. More flooded fields and farmers harrowing and rice planting. Our hostess last night was saying the rice will grow quickly flower in July and be harvested in September. We did manage to have a quick stroll around Vercelli which claims to have been founded 600BC. It has a fine basilica and lots of other religious buildings. We find the ostello in Robbio easily it is behind the Municipio and the police station, and at the back of a loud clock tower. Hopefully this does not ring all night. The boiler works, the drying rack gets moved down to sunshine in the police car park! We hope it doesn’t get a ticket.

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Out of the ostello leaving the back door keys on the desk (after some searching on Tim’s part, they were in his pocket) and the front ones in the key safe, We go back to the cafe we met Mario in yesterday. It is just opening we inquire about coffee and breakfast. “When the bread arrives! Only deici minute.” It appears forthwith fortunately. The next bar is 17km.
We romp across fields and waterways, many fields are flooded through the complex system of irrigation canals and ditches which are often on multiple levels so that one may cross above another. All cunningly evolved to minimise or remove the need for pumping. The largest canal is named after Count Cavour Ray explains his position as the main counterpart to Garibaldi in the unification of Italy. Given the complexity of both the unification of Italy and the canal system this seems strangely appropriate! We find the next bar and have some more cappuci the lady there says her brioche will be ready in dieci minute. Twenty-five minute later we get some lovely warm croissants with fillings. Something maybe wrong in the translation? Or just another example of Demani!
The farmers of the fields are out planting the Arborio rice the region is famous for. Others are also out and about in the fields we see small waders to numerous to recognise, grey herons, Little Egrets and large numbers of Sacred Ibis all hunting frogs and other delights in the growing or soon to be planted flooded fields.
We briefly leave the fields and in a very small village we find shade for lunch just by an old church we are tiring now it is quite a big day and a bar would be great. Tony suggests there is one 50M further it seems unlikely and we eat lunch. On starting again there is a bar 50m down the road, we continue, muttering.
We are soon in Vercelli and check into the great donativo hostel of Sancti Eusebi. It has a washing machine for 3euros and a drying area. Heaven!

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16km Flat.
We get away from our lady of the house by 8.40 she is happy to talk about their walking on pilgrimage routes and has done various Camino’s and an Italian route involving St. Francisco to Assisi.
Soon we get to Cavaglia and get coffee in the main square opposite a church with an impressive dome but little else to commend it, just outside is the graveyard and war memorials in a beautiful setting in fields with distant mountains. The memorial records military, resistance and transported civilian deaths!
The postman stops while we are eating our oranges and gives us water in plastic bottles. Part of the function of pilgrims is to allow locals to feel good about helping, we are happy to oblige.
Shortly after we see a pair of lapwings obviously trying to lure something away from their nest, wherever it is. But then we spot the Harrier that goes down into a field. We don’t know whether it had a good early lunch of baby lapwings! The distant Alps appear over the field and especially on the spiral staircase that is the route over rail and autoroute so that we go round 360deg. Tony metaphorically slides town the banister and gains half a km on the rest of us. We then traverse fields bounded by irrigation ditches sometimes on two levels.
We arrive in Santhia and find Piazza Roma where there is a bar which has keys to our lodgings. In there we find a program for the 1993 Juventus v Moscow match which not only out host attended but the home team of zebras won! Possibly because they played Julius Caesar, well if you had a player called J Caesar you would play him. Ray says he wasn’t really there as he misheard and was therefore in Gaul at the time.
We are taken by Mario across the square to the donativo ostello. This is very serviceable and gives us reductions on meals at two restaurants in town. We feel well braced after our showers. There is s malfunction in the boiler, the water feels like, and probably is, snow melt. But a very pleasant short day across the fields of Piedmont.

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23km Not a lot of up and down.
Dora races down the fish ladder slalom course outside our window all night. All find it a soothing sound.
Yesterday we leapfrogged a Dutchman walking from Amsterdam. Talking to him we realised that although we had an easy crossing of the Grand St Bernard pass last year he had waited three days for possible weather window and finally walked through the tunnel!
The route today is largely flat unlike our previous few days early morning workouts, but there are excellent views of the Alps across the fields. We stop for coffee in Bollengo at a café keen on pilgrims and get a timbro and a choice of cinnamon or chocolate with our cappucini.
We wander on along small country lanes and footpaths with snow clad Alps getting smaller but somehow more surrounding of the Piedmont countryside. Each village we pass through seems to have a clock tower with an arch through which our route passes. We get to Piverone about lunch time and find the bar closed. Fatalistic we plod on round the corner and there is another. The lady sells us biera and explains she is closing. But we can drink from her glasses in the small village square. This is ideal as we can eat our own sandwiches at the same time with a clear conscience! We linger a while in the sunshine, wondering if this is a typical Piedmont Monday, or is it always this quiet. I
However on the subject of sounds we have heard a cuckoo today and a nightingale. Shortly, after a few more km we get to Viverone and then our destination, the village of Ropollo in which Tony and Betsy have identified our lodgings for the night. After a short wait outside, we are early, our hostess arrives. The place is geared, so to speak for cyclists though one might need to dig to discover this!
Food is a little problematic but the lady promises to phone for pizzas.

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