Friday Nov 16. Paestum and Cassino.

Sadly, Theresa and I parted company this morning. Theresa is off to Florence for a few days before flying home. I have dithered over what to do, but have gone back to my original walking plan with some modifications. The problem is that absolutely no one else is walking the Via down here, which of course makes it more problematic for the solo walker in case of any mishap. So I’ll be careful.

Today has become a train day. First, south to Paestum, which I remembered rather vaguely from a visit with my parents when I was thirteen. I wanted to see the Greek temples again, plus there is a whole city, mainly Roman, in ruins.

The Greeks settled here and started building a city, Poseidonia, in the late seventh century BC. Three of their temples remain. This is the oldest, the Temple of Hera, started in 560 BC.

Next came the Temple of Athena, 500 BC.

And finally the Temple of Neptune, 460 BC.

The temples would have been highly decorated and very colourful. Here is a piece of the outside sculptures and then a reconstruction of what it may have looked like.

One last picture. The Romans took over the city in 273 BC, and it went through a period of great prosperity. Here is a large swimming pool (fed by water splashing down from channels towards the left of the photo) in a Roman villa much the same size as today’s McMansions. The city was abandoned in the early Middle Ages, perhaps because of malaria in the swamps, or perhaps because of Saracen raids.

Then a whole afternoon and evening spent waiting for an extremely late train and, with two connections, going north to Cassino,which I’ll talk about tomorrow.

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Sat Oct 4. London.

19 days walking on pilgrimage paths for a total of 395 km or 245 miles on foot (not that arduous - an average of 20.7 km per day, and lots of ‘rest days’ staying put in one place). All of that undone in 1.5 hours on a Eurostar train. I’m not entirely sure what conclusion I’m drawing from that comparison, but I’m back where I started, in London. On my way to my lodgings (I’m staying in a Buddhist retreat centre) I decided to visit the first visitable place to cross my path, which turned out to be the Foundling Museum. Horrified by the sight of infants being abandoned on 18th c London streets, a prosperous seaman, Thomas Coram, spent 17 years raising awareness and funds, as well as obtaining royal permission to build London’s first children’s charity. Opened in 1739, the Foundling Hospital continued its work until the 1950s, and actually is still active as a non-institutional resource, under a different name. Here is a photo of it in 1935. So many similarities to ...

Fri Oct 3. Lille.

I had a lovely day in Lille. In fact, all my days on this trip have been lovely! In the morning I went to the very large Palais des Beaux-Arts. This museum holds the largest collection of works of art of any French institution outside Paris. The collection started at the time of the French Revolution as the works of art of the nobility and of the church were confiscated, and continued on apace due to various enthusiastic municipal governments. By 1892 the collection was so large and important that the Palais, its current house, was constructed in the centre of town. The first fun aspect was the recent work of the Swiss artist Felice Varini who used the museum’s interior as his canvas. The oldest works of art are in the ‘basement’, beautifully displayed. Look at the marvellous three dimensionality of this (flat) marble plaque sculpted by Donatello (c 1435) showing Salomé dancing for the head of John the Baptist. And modern technology brings statues alive by giving them back t...

September 5

I landed at Heathrow this morning at 6 am, a very inconvenient time to get a room and rest! But my student residence accommodation includes a common room with handy couches for a short snooze. The neighbourhood abuts on Regent’s Park, complete with gorgeous flowerbeds. The Queen Mary’s rose garden in Regent’s Park. My neighbourhood wandering took me to the Wallace House which used to be one of the homes of the marquesses of Hertford. The Hertfords were fabulously rich, mainly from extensive land holdings, and in the 18th and 19th centuries avid art collectors. They obviously had Trumpian home decorating tastes. Here are two of their many clocks, all of which need frequent ‘fine tuning’, it appears. I particularly liked two 18th c British paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds in their collection: Mrs Carnac and the hauntingly strange Strawberry Girl.

Celia Walks

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