Day 45 - Caprarola to Sutri- Wednesday July 29, 2015

We had arranged breakfast for 7am, and the deal was to go to the house of the lady who ran the B&B. We stood around outside until after 7am, and then knocked on the door. 

We had our hiking boots on and I asked if she wanted us to take them off, but she said no. The dining room was ceramic tile and right off the vestibule, so we thought it wouldn’t be too rude to just leave them on. The whole thing was a bit awkward really, and all she offered for breakfast was basically cookies and bread, a bottle of juice, and coffee. I can’t walk on an empty stomach so I had three different cookies, very good cookies, but not really what I’d choose for breakfast. My system was still upset and I had to run off before really finishing anything. I told Russell to finish his breakfast, but he insisted on leaving with me.    We returned later with the keys, thanked her and were on the road at 7:30am.

It was a very steep climb out of Caprarola, but the walk was supposed to be basically downhill off the mountain after that. We had some magnificent views leaving the city. We discovered that the basically downhill road was liberally sprinkled with steep uphill climbs every several hundred meters. In fact, although the route notes said the uphill gap today was ‘-‘, we climbed a total of 515 meters and walked 18.3 km.

This has metaphorical significance. Even when the way is primarily smooth and easy, you need to plan for and be prepared for contingencies. The steep uphill sections were probably only partially a result of the geography. Suppose a car going down the mountain had a brake failure. Those steep uphill sections would be very important, their only chance to stop. In all situations, you need an escape route.

We passed through a rather large and historic town along the way, called Ronciglione. It would have been nice if the route notes had identified it as a place that had numerous bars/restaurants and stores. It also had a lot of historical and religious places. There was a very beautiful fountain, called Fontana degli Unicorni, a masterpiece made in 1566 by  Antonio Gentili da Faenza;

a Cathedral, 

a tower, 

statues, other churches, an ancient part of the city; and a grand gate ‘Porta Romana’ decorated with the Farnese lilies. We stopped for a coffee, and also did a lot of sightseeing there.

We then walked along the via Cassia Cimina for 1.2km, turned onto a dirt road passing industrial buildings, then through a grove of hazelnut trees and past the small Sant’Eusebio church (4^th-8^th century), made of tuff (ie, volcanic ash) stone. We were then back on the Via Cassia Cimina for another 1.2 km.

Walking on the via Cassia Cimina is dangerous and, in my opinion, carelessly stupid. It is like walking along Highway 401, except there is only two lanes and no shoulder, there is thorny vegetation along the side of the road forcing you to walk on the road, and there are a lot of hairpin turns. The cars are whizzing by at 120km/hr, with cars passing on a solid line, so that even if the oncoming cars wanted to move over to give you room, they can’t, because a car is passing them in the other lane. Either that, or a car is coming the other way. At one point I noticed a hubcap in a spot that had a ditch, and thought, if a car lost a hubcap now, we’d be dead.

 We were basically on asphalt roads most of the day, except for a few km. Not all of them were as busy or had traffic moving as fast as on the via Cassia Cimina, but the asphalt really bothers my bursitis, and with the problem I was having with my system, it was a challenge.

A few km before Sutri we passed a large waterslide park. 

What fun it would have been to go there. Where are the kids when you need them!

We got to Sutri at around 12:45pm. We were planning to go to the amphitheater here and have lunch, but it was getting close to Siesta time, and we needed some supplies, so just came into the city to our hotel. Our hotel is an Albergo, very nice but quite modest. Shortly after we arrived the fellow running the place left. We made use of the small bar/table area to have our lunch, then came up to wash two days of clothes, shower, have a rest, and blog.  

There is a lot to do here, and a ton of tourists in the town.

Dinner was not included today, and we accidentally stumbled upon a restaurant for supper with an absolutely magnificent view. We each just had a simple primo (pasta dish) and salad for supper, but it was good, and we really enjoyed the view.

The owner of the hotel talks only Italian. I looked over the route notes for tomorrow, and it is 28km, primarily on asphalt, with a stint on a ‘very busy 4 lane highway’. It’s bad enough on a 2 lane highway here. There is a major amount of sightseeing here, so I called Beppe to arrange a drive tomorrow afternoon to our next accommodation. This will leave us with one last day of walking on Friday.

We would both rather be walking these last few days to Rome. But we’d like to arrive alive! You need to have a plan B.