Sunday Dec 3. Monopoli. 29 km.

A long walk today, starting through fields, then on to an esplanade along the coast which all of a sudden ended and became a path. So for quite a lot of the day I was picking my way between stones, grass and the sea along an unmarked and unreliable path, or rather crisscrossing paths.

Luscious lettuce.

Houses by the sea are nearly always white.

The path(s)

A seaside town

Monopoli is a resort town but as it is off season, it is a quiet town. As with most towns along the coast, there is a castle and of course a number of churches.

Fresh tuna fish for supper.

From here to Brindisi is four days walking, but I’m going to take the train, for several reasons. The walking is going to be similar to what I did today, and the towns don’t look very interesting. Accommodations in these towns are quite a bit more expensive than usual, although it is hardly the season for their usual beach-loving clientele. But above all, I would like to walk to Leuca (at the southern tip of the east coast) and to have the time to do this, plus to visit Ravenna and Bologna, I need to accelerate. So now I have all my days planned until December 20 when I fly from Bologna to Paris - and end this blog.

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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 ...

Saturday September 6

I have given myself today and tomorrow in London before starting the walk. A good thing because I’m having technical difficulties getting on to the AirB&B site that I need to access for my Monday night accommodation… Today I had a lovely walk to Canary Wharf along quiet streets bordering the Thames. The tide was high and the water a bit agitated, but the sun was warm and the strollers happy. Over 25,000 bombs fell on this area of London in WWII as the Germans fully recognised the importance of maritime trade to British resilience. Some warehouses have survived (or been rebuilt) and the extensive blocks of post-war flats are very attractive (and very very expensive.) I had a pleasant break in a sixteenth century pub, the ‘Prospect of Whitby’, where Charles Dickens would come to listen to dock folk - original flagstone floors and a pewter counter on the bar. From the waterfront balcony patrons in earlier days could watch as pirates and smugglers were hung from a gibb...

Celia Walks

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