Wednesday Nov 29. Ruvo di Puglia. 23.3 km.

Andria’s main attraction is its Cathedral. Emperor Frederick II’s second and third wives are buried here. In general, Emperor Frederick II was an admirable Emperor: King of Sicily, Germany, and Italy before becoming Holy Roman Emperor from 1220 and King of Jerusalem from 1225. It was he who admitted Muslims to his armies and worked for peace and harmony throughout his realms (while fighting a surprising number of wars). But his wives didn’t have it easy. He tended to seclude them, to forbid them to talk to or even see other men, including their own brothers, and he also neglected them, surrounding himself with a “harem” of other women. His second wife, Isabella, was 14 when he married her (mainly so he could get for himself the title ´King of Jerusalem’) and she died at 16 after giving birth to two children.

All that story as a build-up to a visit to the cathedral - where no trace of these two ladies remains.

So many relics - so many bits of bones!

So nothing left but to continue walking through olive groves, passing through the unremarkable town of Canosa, and then taking to the roadside to again do two days of stages in one day. I was cheered on by the first glimpses of the Adriatic Sea. In two days I will be down by the shore.

I’m staying at a more expensive B&B tonight in order to make sure to get heating. As long as the sun is shining, daytime walking is still t-shirt weather, but it gets cold at night, and the challenge is to get the daily clothes washing to dry.

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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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