Wednesday Dec 6. Lecce. 23.5 km.

A lovely day for walking, sunny and cool. Rain threatened in the afternoon but, unlike yesterday, none fell.

Many more of these trullis. Here is the view looking up from inside one of the larger ones - and one of the only ones not filled with garbage! The construction seems very similar to how the Inuit build their igloos.

And the very first pilgrim rest station on the Via Francigena sud!

The highlight of the walk was the Abbey of Santa Maria di Cerrate. Built in the eleventh century as a Byzantine monastery (meaning it adhered to the eastern - or Constantinople - or Greek Orthodox - whatever name you prefer - Catholicism) it became one of the most important and richest monastic centres in southern Italy. The last monks left in the sixteenth century, and the buildings were converted into a large farm complex. The church was still used for worship until the Turks arrived in 1711 and devastated the locale. It has recently been restored by the Italian National Trust.

The outside of the farm buildings around the Abbey.

The Byzantine (Eastern) influence shows up in the frescoes. In this one Christ is looking down at the body of his mother Mary, but he is also carrying her as a mummy in his arms.

Then a rather long walk through the suburbs of Lecce (at one point there was a high security prison on one side of the road and a shopping centre with a McDonalds at its heart on the other side…) I have a nice tiny apartment for two nights in Lecce. It is in a large palazzo (essentially any large residential building seems to get called palazzo) and my windows look out on this inner courtyard.

Comments

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

Search This Blog