Day 47 - Campagnano di Roma to Isola Farnese- Friday July 31, 2015

As I said yesterday, the hotel room last night is really small, shabby, sparsely furnished, and not overly clean. But the dinner was superb. We each had penne with spicy arrabbiata sauce as a primo; Russell had a pork chop for his secondo; and, I had stir fried beef with arugula for a secondo, which was so absolutely delicious I’m going to have to learn how to make it myself (did I ever mention before that beef with arugula is supposed to be an aphrodisiac for tired pilgrims?) Russell wanted to get some grappa after supper, but the waiter never came back to us. Russell was annoyed by this, but rather than seeking him out, we just left.

We both slept pretty good last night. The one thing the room did have was a fully functioning air conditioner. After instantly falling asleep, I woke up at 2am to go to the bathroom, and when I returned I started worrying about bed bugs. The place was a bit of a dive. As time ticked by, I said to myself, ‘shine the flashlight on the sheets, and see if there is a problem’, but I was afraid I would see some and then what? I’d have to go spend the rest of the night in the marble stairway with no air conditioning. I finally fell back asleep around 4am. I’m sure there were no bedbugs.

Breakfast was pretty pathetic again. Tang for a breakfast juice, a cappuccino, and a croissant (at least it was fresh, and not in a cellophane package). We also got a packaged chocolate cake, and package of toast (like melba toast but much thicker). We took the packaged goods for lunch. He didn’t charge us for the water and 0.5 litre of house wine we had at dinner, and we were on the road at 7:50am.

Most of the walk today was off any sort of main/busy highway, which was much appreciated. It was however, largely on asphalt roads, or hard packed gravel roads.

Guess what the very first thing we did was? Climb steeply for several km. It was very hot and the humidity was forecast to be 100% but without rain. Is that possible? Much of today was spent either climbing steeply up or descending steeply down hills. We walked 22.9 km today and climbed 615 meters.

We entered and exited and walked through the Parco Naturale Regionale di Veio several times today. On went the muskol. We were talking to Kristjan and Kristine last Saturday, and Kristjan asked how the deer flies were now, I hadn’t mentioned them anymore. There are still lots of deer flies! They seem to like to sleep in until 9:30am, but today they were bad already at 8:30am. The only reason I haven’t mentioned them is because I have given in to using Muskol. I have been putting it in on as soon as they are a problem, and it works to keep them away. They don’t seem to be as attracted to Russell, and he has never put on any Muskol. He does however have several bites.

It was very pleasant walking through the park: sometimes shady; 

part of the path was cut out of tuff rock;

we forded streams; 

it was very quiet; and the scenery was lovely. At one point we could have made a detour to visit the magnificent Sanctuario of Madonna del Sorba, but we didn’t because it was well before 10am and most rural churches are only open from 10am-noon (not to mention it would have involved a mighty climb up there).  

When we weren’t in the park, we passed many mansions with gates/fences and lots of barking dogs. We are pretty much in the suburbs of Rome here, and rich people are looking for prime estate.

Once again we were following the route notes today, which were very clear. The GPS was not working again (in the sense that it was just following the highway, yuck, not the alternate paths which the route notes were following).

There was a major disconnect with the route notes/GPS at the only town we went through today, namely Formello. The GPS was going to bypass the town, whereas the route notes took us right through it. Thank God too, otherwise we would have gone 23 km today with no stores/restaurants getting to Isola Farnese, and there is NOTHING in Isola Farnese!

We ran into 4 pilgrims today. One husband/wife team, who had been at the same restaurant as us with the lovely view in Sutri. They had started in Gambassi, a couple of weeks ago. We were there on July 15. The other was a mother/daughter pair from France. They had started in France three years ago, and had walked a part of the via Francigena each year since, and then picked up from where they left off the next year. The mother is 74 years old. I walked for a stretch with the mother, and asked why she was walking the VF. She said for physical reasons (ie, to keep healthy and in shape), for the scenery, for mental health, and for spirituality. I told her I was doing it for the same reasons.

We only got lost for a very short period today. I don’t know why. The way mark signs, the GPS, the route notes, all said to turn right off a country gravel road and go through an opening in an iron gate, on to a minor trail that was heading into the woods. We kept going on the gravel road! Luckily a local stopped at a farm just up the road and got out of the car and told us we missed the turn. Russell was very annoyed with the route notes, but honestly, I think we just simply decided not to turn there.

All the other pilgrims we met today were going to La Storta. Our route notes said La Storta is ‘an ugly suburb of Rome’ so they decided to stop in the small, lovely hamlet of Isola Farnese, a few km ahead.

We were not amused. Dinner today is not included. We need supplies for today and tomorrow. There are no stores/bars/restaurants in this town. We have walked 14km since the last place we could get cold water. The room has no fridge, no air conditioner, and another totally minimal breakfast.

Russell was really mad about this. She had said she would drive us to dinner tonight, which would have been around 7:30 -8pm. We wanted to go to a store now instead, pick up food for supper and other supplies for the walk tomorrow, and eat an early supper here. There is a bus every 40 minutes from Isola Farnese to La Storta. I thought it might be nice to be independent and take the bus. Russell wanted her to drive us to the store, a fair exchange for not driving us to dinner.

The lady here speaks nothing but Italian. We were trying to use the phone’s italian/english conversion feature to communicate what we wanted to do.

Russell was saying he wanted her to drive us to the store, and he thought he was progressing nicely along that vein. I was getting the impression she really didn’t understand the whole concept, and I mentioned the bus. Well she picked up on that right away, and seemed to drop any idea of driving us. I could see Russell was very annoyed with me. It’s true we wouldn’t know where to get off the bus.

In the end she drove us there and dropped us off, but not where we asked her to take us. We like Conad, a supermercato here, because it tends to cater to a North American diet much better than all the other grocery stores. Russell had asked her via the phone translation feature to take us to Conad, but she dropped us off at a Tostad. The two stores were a considerable distance apart. Lots of grumbling.

Russell was using his phone data plan to figure out where we were and where we wanted to go. She had kind of vaguely told us where to get the bus back, but it was a long way from the Conad. As luck would have it, as we were walking to the Conad the bus we were to take drove up a side street and turned onto the via Cassia right before our eyes, so we knew exactly what stop to get on at. We walked the rest of the way to the Conad, stopping to have a cold beer. That greatly improved everyone’s outlook on our predicament. The bus is every 40 minutes, and we waited at the bus stop for a good 30-35 minutes. We got back, and were having our Conad dinner at a table in what was a restaurant at our hotel, when she came by. She then clarified that she was relieved of the duty of driving us to supper (I didn’t think she was catching on to that). She said ‘oh, you went to Conad’.

The room is unbelievably hot. With the humidex it was 47 today!

The route notes to Rome look pretty scary, traffic wise. But it’s our last day walking, and we have decided to just ‘do it’. It’s 24km, we hope to leave at 7am, and get to Rome by 2pm.