Day 39 - Rocca d’Orcia to Radicofani- Thursday July 23, 2015

We left the window open last night with the air conditioner going. It went down to 22 degrees last night, much less than the temperature of the room. We both slept very well.

We had arranged breakfast for 9:30 am which in retrospect was pretty late considering how early we’ve been getting up. I was up 7am, after just lying in bed awake from 6am on. We walked to Castiglione d’Orcia around 8:30, passing the café that was closed yesterday, but open today. We had a cappuccino and croissant to hold us until breakfast. The town is first mentioned in 714, and was in the possession of a family until 1252. During the 14^th century it became a Sienese possession later it was a matter of dispute between another family and Siena. We visited the Piazza il Vecchietta, which is dedicated to the painter, sculptor, and architect Lorenzo di Pietro (1412-1480). At the center of the square is a fine fountain in travertine dated 1618, 

which is completely sloping. We also visited the Romanesque church of Saint Mary and Magdalena. Its façade dates back to the 13^th century, while the apse is 1 century older.

We then went back for breakfast, which the male owner was preparing and serving. He told us to just sit down and he would serve us breakfast. We have learned enough by now to know better than that and asked what was coming. We weren’t too interested in what he had in mind, and in the end we got a delicious breakfast of freshly pureed pear, served as a juice, some homemade peach squares (very good but too sweet for breakfast in our opinion), fresh peach jam he had made, toast , scrambled eggs, and cappuccino. He and his wife do a lot of travelling in the off season, but he has never been to Canada. Coming to Canada between January to March or in November (when they take their holidays) might not suit them well!

All of the churches in the area, according to the male owner of the B&B, are always closed now, except for the ones open on Sunday for services. He thinks it is because people lately have been stealing treasures from the churches. He said before, all the churches were always open (24 hours a day), and that is the way it should be.

After we climbed up to the Rocca di Tentennano (Rocca literally means rock, an Italian term meaning a high fortifiable stronghold), paying 3 euro each to visit it. It was very interesting. You certainly had a great view of the mother ship (ie, Siena), and the surrounding rolling farmland. 

From up there we saw a lot of what we would have covered on foot today. Our host had said that if it was clear enough you could see the Mediterrean, but it was too hazy. The interesting thing is that the area reminds you of the Lord of the Rings scenery. There is a series of the fortresses across the land, allowing for communication with Siena in medieval times. Now if something is happening, everyone in the whole world knows virtually instantly via the internet!

The baggage taxi was supposed to come at noon, but wasn’t there at 12:20pm, so I called Beppe, who assured me he would be coming soon. He arrived about 5 minutes later, and only talked Italian. It was very narrow, steep roads in Rocca d’Orcia, and he scraped his side mirror on buildings quite a few times exiting the old city, which I would then extend again. At first I was going to retract the mirror so he would stop scraping it on the buildings, but he got the point across he wanted it extended again. At least it folded up when he hit something, or the mirror would be gone. He was decidedly an octogenarian, who drove very fast on those steep roads with a lot of hairpin turns. I had the brakes on the whole time. Russell said he was doing up to 120 km/hr. At least if anything had gone wrong, it would have been instant curtains for the lot of us.

From km 19.2 to 28 on the VF, we would have been walking on an asphalt road to Radicofani. Given the rugged surrounding landscape, there was no other possibility. The Rocca of Radicofani can be seen from very far around and from both the north and the south. The present tower, the remains of the original fortress, was built in the year 1200 then rebuilt between 15 and 1600. For a long time, Radicofani was a very important place controlling the via Francigena and the border between Tuscany, Umbria, and Latium and therefore was the center of a power contest between major towns.

We got here at 1:05 pm and when I got out of the car I noticed that the whole side of the car was scraped. Wonder how many mirrors he’s gone through?

There were several ladies standing about waiting for the fish vendor truck to come, one of whom spoke English. She became our translator with the taxi fellow, and the lady running the B&B, who we called on the cell phone to tell her we were here. I was extremely disappointed to discover that we were not staying at the agritourism B&B with the pool (which is where we were to stay according to my original package from Macs from last October), but in the historic centre of Radicofani. The same person owned both places. The lady was at the other place, and said she would be here to let us in our room in 15 to 20 minutes.

A good half an hour later, the B&B lady still wasn’t there, the taxi driver was still there, and the English lady had finally concluded her fish purchase. 

I was wondering if the taxi guy was still there because he wanted to get a paper signed by the B&B lady saying he had delivered the suitcases. The English lady determined that he was still there because he was picking someone up at the bank and taking them to where we had come from, namely Rocca d’Orcia. I wondered if that was why he was late picking us up. It would have been fine with us to leave later, if we had known, but we had to stand in the hot sun outside our B&B in Rocca d’Orcia waiting for him, which was not pleasant.

The pool place was 7km before Radicofoni (ie, back toward Rocca d’Orcia), and I would have walked back there (if necessary) if a spot was available, I was so looking forward to the pool. I had been hoping the B&B lady would show up before the English speaking lady left, and the taxi driver. The English speaking lady suggested we call the B&B lady again, which was the obvious solution, I don’t know why I didn’t think of that. So we did, but the pool place was fully booked. I was very disappointed. It was so hot, and I had my heart set on going in the pool.

The B&B lady was also still at the other place (ie, she hadn’t even left yet)! I wanted to go to a bar and get something cold to drink and lunch, but she insisted we sit on a bench in front of the B&B so we would be there when she got there. The bench was in the full sun.

Russell and I took turns manning the bench while the other went and got lunch and cold water. The lady finally showed up. She never asked for our passports, didn’t get the voucher, there was no wifi, dinner wasn’t included, and she gave me a voucher with the name of the other B&B on it. I got all excited thinking it was a voucher to go use the pool, but it was a voucher for breakfast at a bar the next morning.

This place is an apartment with a kitchen, sitting room, bedroom, and bathroom. It is very nice, but it is very hot and has no fan, no air conditioner, and no pool. Oh well, the place tomorrow is supposed to have a pool. We’ll see.

We wandered around the town, got a stamp at the hostel, visited the church, picked up our breakfast at the bar (so we could eat it at our apartment tomorrow and leave early), had a small but nice supper, and went to bed. We would have eaten supper at the apartment, we even had a fully equipped kitchen, but we couldn’t find any food to prepare into dinner at the stores in town. It was a very small village. We didn’t visit the Rocca at Radicofani, because it was closed by the time we were ready to go. We slept very well again, the apartment had lots of windows, so we got a good breeze through to cool the place off, and the lobby was air conditioned, so we left our room door open until we went to bed.

We called Beppe and arranged to shave km off tomorrow and the next day. Tomorrow is 25 km with no shade the whole day, and Saturday is 31km – impossible in this heat. Unfortunately, the forecast doesn’t show signs of the heat wave ending any time soon. After Saturday we will be fine for the rest of the journey. Most days are 18km or less, one or two are 24km, and we can manage that. I’m not sure if we will actually walk into Rome next Saturday, because a lot of the journey is on very busy highways, and the route notes don’t recommend doing it. We’ll see. I’ll call Beppe when we get closer and see what he says.