Walking Across Italy

Today we made the short trip from Spoleto to Poreta (about 15 km or 10 miles). Since we knew that we would get there relatively quickly, we did a bit of sightseeing in Spoleto first. There is a beautiful cathedral (duomo) which contains a letter from St. Francis to Friar Leone from 1222 (a thousand years ago!). Since we are following the St. Francis trail, we had to stop.

As we headed out of Spoleto, we started seeing lots of olive groves. These are not olives to eat, but olives to press into olive oil.

Yesterday, a friend who is reading my blog (Mary Nelson) asked me what do we do on these long walks? I replied that we talked about our families, exchanged ideas, brainstormed new concepts, listened to audio books, or just got immersed in our own thoughts. Today, while immersed in the scenery, I wrote a little song. It goes to the tune of “Lemon Tree” by Peter, Paul, and Mary.

Olive tree, very gnarly,

But, the oil from it is sweet.

And the fruit of the poor olive

Is too bitter, for you to eat.

Don’t worry, I’m not expecting this to make the Billboard charts. It was just a good example of how we pass the time on the trail.

However, today we met a very nice lady from South Africa who was making the journey to Poreta by herself. She asked if she could join our troop, and we were pleased that someone wanted to share the road with 3 smelly, old guys.

When we arrived in Poreta, around 2:30 in the afternoon, it was clear that we had time to relax (for the first time in 10 days). I took advantage of this and headed to the hotel pool. It’s not pretty, but it was really relaxing.

All I need is a glass of wine and I would call this heaven. Tomorrow, we have a 24 km hike which is actually 2 stages of the trail. So, I need to rest up.