Monday Nov 27. Canosa. 30.2 km.

Another day where I managed to do two “stages” in one day by doing a fair amount of road walking. This wasn’t my initial intention, but a farmer stopped me as I set out on a muddy lane and strongly advised me to take the road, so I reached my supposed destination at 11.30, and it was a rather dreary town with nothing much to do or see. Unfortunately, I think I had a lovely pilgrim place to stay there with a very friendly family, but I just couldn’t face spending so much time in a nondescript place, so off I went to the following day’s destination, Canova. Another nondescript town, but at least I arrived at 4.30 with less time to put in!

Olive harvesting is still going on. Different types of olives ripen at different times, and also the degree of ripeness affects the taste of the olive oil. With the huge fields of olive trees, more mechanization is needed. This machine shakes the whole tree to get the olives down.

At the end of the day I saw a number of small tractors pulling loads of olives to the weigh station. Canova has a number of olive presses, and you can smell the olive oil as you walk by.

It is quite striking how important walls are. All the agribusinesses are walled and fenced. The first thing that gets built on an industrial building site is the wall. And the minute anything of any value goes inside the wall, there will be one or two dogs stationed inside to bark at whoever walks by!

I liked this mural. I am walking at a tortoise pace, but it often feels like the countryside is flying by as I walk. Cars go by at breakneck speed, and I can’t imagine how different things must look to the people driving. I wonder if the Mennonites at home with their horse and buggy must wonder how we can feel or see our surroundings from our cars. We get used to whatever speed we are living at, I guess.

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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.

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...

Celia Walks

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