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.

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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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