Day 13 - Garlasco to Pavia - Saturday June 27, 2015

Remember what I said about our room yesterday being like a motel but opening on to a courtyard instead of a parking lot. Well, later in the day people started arriving that parked their cars in the courtyard. One couple even arrived around midnight, and I thought what a life it must be being a hotel owner. At all these places we are staying, it seems to be a family affair, with three or four people running the place, all of whom serve breakfast early and work all day.

One thing we noticed, was that so far on our walk the locals have basically looked at us like we were a couple of aliens. Some people have encouraged us but not many. It was quite different here, almost everyone smiled at us, raised a fist, said ‘buon camino’, or asked how far we were going and seemed enchanted we were going all the way to Rome. On the other hand, the sign posting on the route today was very poor, so the locals had not followed through on their enthusiasm for the pilgrimage with more tangible assistance to the pilgrim, like signs to show the route.

We were at breakfast right at 7:30am and on the road at 7:50am. It didn’t take too long to get lost though. The GPS was not tracking our route, even though we were following the rather minimal via Francigena signs and the route notes. Then, of course, the route notes are written in hieroglyphics, making the whole journey an adventurous puzzle to be solved. We went the wrong way twice. The first time a farmer drove over to us and pointed out the way we should have gone, and the second time we saw another pilgrim go another way. By the time we were at km 3 in the route notes we had walked 5.2km. This was a bit concerning since we expected to have to walk 27km today, but at that point the GPS kicked in, makings the route a bit easier to figure out.

As mentioned, we had observed another pilgrim from a distance just before one of our mistakes, which he could clearly observe us making, and then after we were back on track and following him, we took a different turn at a certain point (we were following the route notes, not the GPS, a dangerous thing to do) but we cut him off a bit further up. It turned out to be Louis, the German pilgrim. We all had a good laugh about that. We never walked with him, mainly because he doesn’t seem to want to (possibly because there is almost a complete communication barrier), but we kept leap frogging each other all day. It did get up to 31 degrees today, making it very hot, but he had a very bad sunburn from his 38km day, and was totally covered with clothes to protect it. It must have been a very hard day for him.

After walking out of the city of Garlasco, we walked along rice field canals. At one point we went down dragonfly alley, with dragon flies in grand abundance, thinking about Carol the whole way. We hope she had wonderful trip and visit with friends and relatives in New Brunswick.

Shortly after we went by a cemetery and small chapel, where we cut Louis off at the pass. Next we walked through the city Gropello Cairoli, where we met Louis again and we all went into San Giorgio Martine Parrish Church. Another church full of gorgeous marble and silver and gold statues. A nun in the church asked if we wanted a room, but we said we were walking to Pavia.

We stopped for a cappuccino at a bar then went past more rice fields, along canals. We saw two grey herons, many bittern, a dead muskrat, a bunny, a herd of cows being led out to pasture, and thousands of butterflies.

We actually climbed up to a town, Villanova d’Ardenghi, and entered San Cristoforo Martine Parrish Church, but it was being readied for a wedding and what I assume was the bride’s mother shooed us away in a real hurry. We then ran into Louis sitting on a bench, eating a popsicle, with his boots off. We went into the bar across the street from him and each bought a popsicle too – it was terrific.

Other highlights included passing a horse riding stable, then walking along the Ticino river for about 10km. What a glorious river. Beautiful white sand beach all along (on the other side) with hundreds of people out swimming, boating, and having a wonderful Saturday. I would have dearly loved to go swimming in that river. The water was beautifully clear and it was stifling hot! We did a get a few opportunities to get to a beach from our side, but for the most part we were walking along a cliff which dropped to the river below.

We ran into Hugo in Pavia while we were trying to find the hotel, and he said ‘are you okay’? I said, ‘well after walking 30km in 31 degrees we’re doing pretty good’. I asked if he had walked from Garlasco today too, but he hadn’t walked that far. He said Robert left for Milan today to fly to the Camino. I said, ‘the 38km day did him in, did it?’ I don’t think Hugo caught on, so I’m pretty sure he, at least, has been taking a few trains too.

The hotel is a bit of a dive, but we have a large room and it is okay. The air conditioner is giving it its best shot at cooling the room off. It might be lacking a bit of freon.

At least my feet co-operated today. We walked 30km and other than being sore from the sheer distance, no problem with the bursitis. We both have a rather nasty heat rash from today. I don’t think you are supposed to cover your entire body with cortison cream!

Dinner is not included, so we had a super Mercator supper of salad and noodles in our room. It’s nice to not eat in a restaurant for at least one day.

I also redid the math on our dinners. We have paid 11 British pounds, or 16 euros, or 22 CDN for our dinners, each. Not really too expensive. So, we should be grateful for all we are getting!

28km tomorrow, and it’s supposed to be 33 degrees. Gads.