Thursday Nov 30. Bitonto. 21.4 km.

Today started out with a pleasant stroll through Rugò di Puglia and another visit to its cathedral.

Today’s walk should have been easy, but my legs were tired and draggy. And the whole - yes, all five hours of walking - was through olive groves. They say there are around 500 different types of olive trees in the world. I hadn’t noticed any differences in the various orchards I’ve walked through, but for part of today’s walk there was a strong olive perfume in the air, something I hadn’t noticed before.

Nearly everyone fences their olive groves. Here is one with a double gate - but the wall is ridiculously low. Why???

The path today was actually an easy, fairly flat and very straight country track that followed exactly the ancient Via Traiano built by the Emperor Trajan at the start of the second century to link Benevento to Brindisi. A Roman speedway. As I dragged along, I thought of how much heavier-laden the Roman legionnaires must have been as they made their way to and from trouble spots. I also wondered what Trajan would think of his fine stone road now having become a puddle-filled, muddy and often garbage-strewn country lane.

My destination, Bitonto, is a smallish town with a few nice shops and a lovely twelfth century Romanesque cathedral. Inside it is surprisingly high - soaring up almost like the gothic cathedrals.

Here is a lovely palazzo, now an art gallery.

Another surprise was my B&B. As is my habit, I had booked the least expensive and most central place that looked like it might have heating. I found myself in a restored ancient palazzo with a whole suite of rooms to wander through before getting to my bedroom. I couldn’t really complain that the whole place wasn’t heated when I was only paying $60.00 to be surrounded by such splendour!

Christmas lights starting to sparkle.

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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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