Tuesday Nov 28. Andria. 24 km.

Sun in the morning, rain in the afternoon. Today I stayed with the Via, and the Via stayed entirely on country lanes winding through olive groves occasionally interspersed with fruit trees or grapes. In the morning there were a fair number of people gathering olives or tending the vines, but at lunch time they all drove off and with the rain, none came back.

These interesting constructions are starting to show up in the fields. They must be old (they just seem to be repositories for garbage these days) and are probably the original “trullis” that people go to see west of here - trullis are little round houses that were built in great numbers in the past.

Last night I was flipping tv channels when I came across Denys Arcand’s film “L’âge des ténèbres’. His work is really good! I got a lot of the Quebec references but missed the subtleties as it was of course dubbed in Italian. It was a welcome cultural change.

Today’s food intake wasn’t great. Rusks and apricot jam plus a cellophane wrapped apricot tart for breakfast. (B&B usually means individually wrapped items left in a basket by an electric expresso maker in the bedroom). Lunch was two packets of biscuits from the breakfast offerings. Arriving in Andria at 4.00 pm found a cafe open for cappuccino and a croissant with prosciutto stuffing. By 7.00 was too hungry to wait for the restaurants to open at 8.00 so had a paper cone of French fries with fried wiener slices. Plus a small chocolate bar for dessert. Must do better tomorrow!

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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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