Saturday December 9. Otranto. 31.2 km.

I had another perfect day for walking - sunny, 13 degrees, very little wind and absolutely no rain. And another long walk, like yesterday a bit over 30 km.

At the first village after Martano I saw that they had marked yesterday’s Feast of the Immaculate conception with Mass, then a procession through the village carrying their statue of Mary, then the local band playing, then fireworks. I really didn’t pick the right place to stay in!

As yesterday, the landscape is full of stones. It is also home to a large number of menhirs and dolmens from around 2,000 BC. The menhirs are tall and slender in this region - foreshadowing later Greek and Roman columns! Many were christianized in medieval times with carved crosses, or else a cross inserted at the top. Others were hollowed out at the top to put in a flame as a signpost.

In medieval times I’m getting the impression that quite a lot of building was done into the rock in this region. Two churches on my way had crypts dug into the rock with very old Byzantine art (they were both closed, so you are spared more religious pictures!) The Via passed by an interesting site - medieval barns and storage vats dug underground in the rock, plus an underground olive press that would have been turned by donkeys or mules.

A very nice surprise was a section of the Via with proper signage, welcome signs and even benches! It didn’t last all that long, but it was lovely. A while back I walked for five or six days with not one Via sign, and when they started again they were sporadic and completely unreliable. Thank goodness for the interactive Via map on my cell phone! But it really is lovely having signs and indications that people care about the Via. It makes it a much less lonely pilgrimage.

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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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