Wednesday Nov 22. Buonalbergo.. 24 km.

Second posting with photos.

Wednesday was a longer day walking - left at 9 am and arrived at 4 pm with only three by-the-side-of-the-road stops. Lots of up and down, and an annoying path. Over the past two days, there have been no directional signs for the Via. That means you have to regularly consult the app on your cell phone to see if you are on the right path.

Today there started to be occasional signs, but that led me to a bridge that obviously hadn’t been used for many years with a barricade saying unfit for foot traffic. So I had to devise an alternate route which led through an industrial zone. After that, picked up the Via path again. The path started off as a road, for no discernible reason became a track, because of recent rain became all muddy, then when shoes couldn’t become any more clogged with mud, became a stream running between two high banks of brambles. With wet feet and scratched arms, all of a sudden, again for no visible reason, a drainage ditch appeared for the water, and then, wonders of wonders, a concrete embankment and asphalt paving that lasted for about 50 metres. Back to a mud track.  Aagh!

Then someone in authority decided to erect information boards about the Via every so often. These were usually placed at strategic spots where several roads and tracks led off in the countryside. Not once today did a helpful arrow indicate which one of these paths to take!

In all of this, my walking stick came in most useful. It helped me ford streams and avoid falling down in the mud. Several times I was accosted by country dogs at liberty - the stick played a key role in keeping them at bay.

There often is lots of garbage on the side of roads. I saw a crew at work cutting grass beside a small road. They just cut over the garbage - would have made things so much better if instead of cutting the not very long grass, they had picked up the empty bottles and wrappers people had thrown out their car windows. Here is a terrible example of roadside dumping.

And an interesting example of roadside graffiti.

Now it’s evening and Morgane and I have reunited. We’re in a small village staying at a very simple pilgrim hostel. The farm couple who run the hostel shared dinner with us and one other pilgrim, a young Italian guy walking from Lecce back to Rome. Like the lunch I was given at my lodgings in Vitulano, this was a simple meal, but almost everything grown or produced on the farm: their own wine, olive oil, greens, tomatoes, chickpeas and eggs. At the end of the meal each of us got toasted bread doused in the home made oil - it was delicious.