Tuesday, April 16, 2002 12:03<\/p>\n
Weather: Sunny morning, but the clouds are moving in<\/p>\n
Location: Civita square<\/p>\n
I woke up early and had a shower. I wanted to get out and see the area before the light got too flat. I was also expecting Franco to show up at any minute, hoping for a coffee )as the second part of the “B&B” is supposedly included here). I went out into the square to sit and read my book.<\/p>\n
The film crew (actually a Brazillian soap opera, apparently) started mustering and got to work on dismantling some of their gear from the day before. A man passing offered me some of their coffee, and as I couldn’t think of a reason to decline I politely said “grazie” and went and got some. It was delicious.<\/p>\n
At 9:30 or so, I decided not to wait for Franco any more and set off down the bridge to Bagnoregio. Walking back to the point where I’d hopped off the bus took a while: it was, according to a sign when I got there, about 2 1\/2 km. I stopped in a small bakery and picked up a pastry and went and explored a little park, which had a tall three-sided pyramid dedicated to the village’s war dead — from 1867.<\/p>\n
I took a left and turned onto a side road heading down into the valley. There was an incessant din of birdsong, the occasional clang of goat- and cowbells, and the occasional buzz of a car engine as it roared by me at warp 6. They all seemed to drive at top speed down the narrow road, and I was curious as to how close they would come to colliding, but never saw two at once.<\/p>\n
The road turned back and forth as it descended, and I walked on. I passed a woman walking the other way, who seemed to have rather a dour expression, but she brightened to a smile when I said “buongiorno”. A farmer on one side of the road was ploughing a tiny field with a hand-propelled plough. I wondered briefly about what kind of crop he could possibly grow that would make such a small field pay.<\/p>\n
Eventually, I came to a paved trail climbing steeply up to my left towards Civita. A sign post described the trail up to the village, and I copied it into my notebook. As I was doing so, two dirt bike riders drove up the trail; one soon returned and continued up the road.<\/p>\n
I started up the trail, which clibed up steeply, passing a farm house that seemed to be under renovation. Soon thereafter I came to a view point, but from here the reality of the trail diverged sharply from the signpost’s suggestions. There was a dirt track going upwards, but it seemed to be a farmer’s lane, and when I got to the top of that it opened into a field, with no further signposts. On the far side of the field I found a further trail, but this one was narrow and overgrown. Feeling more and more like Indiana Jones cutting through the jungle, I continued up, crossing a couple of fences and stepping through a gate, until I found the signs of an ancient staircase leading up. I followed this, and it wound up to the cliff walls of Civita, where it met a more travelled path leading left, to the Etruscan tunnel under the village, and right, up a broader stair past ancient animal pens cut into the rock to the village’s “back door”.<\/p>\n
I came back to Civita shortly before noon. Immediately I ran into the first of a couple of groups of American tourists who’d invaded during my hike. It’s amazing how much they stand out, all with cameras and piercing voices: “oh Joyce you must come and see this over here, there’s this beautiful flower arrangement”… etc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tuesday, April 16, 2002 12:03 Weather: Sunny morning, but the clouds are moving in Location: Civita square I woke up early and had a shower. I wanted to get out and see the area before the light got too flat. I was also expecting Franco to show up at any minute, hoping for a coffee […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2002-mediterranean-tour","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tomleslie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tomleslie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tomleslie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tomleslie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tomleslie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tomleslie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":504,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tomleslie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions\/504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tomleslie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tomleslie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tomleslie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}