Tuesday, September 2nd
We had a huge rainstorm yesterday evening followed by thunder and lightning in the middle of the night so the trails today were still wet and muddy in places. We had read a review from someone who had walked this section a few days before and she said the first third of the way was muddy and slippery and steeper than the Tour du Mont Blanc trail. She recommended bypassing this section if at all possible.
Following this advice, we opted to take a taxi from our hotel to the small town of Bacedasco Basso, cutting off @ 5 miles of today’s planned hike. Starting out from Bacedasco we had a long uphill climb and then a gentle downhill before turning onto a pleasant, forested path that followed the Stirone River before veering towards Fidenza, our destination for the day.
Our total mileage was 10.5 miles with 500 feet of elevation gain. As of today, we are @ a third of the way both in mileage (206 miles out of 602 miles) and in days (15 walking days out of a total of 45 walking days). As faithful readers of this blog may remember, we didn’t walk the 17.5 miles from Pavia to Santa Cristina but instead took a train to Santa Cristina where we were almost stranded at the train station before being transported to our flooded agriturismo. That day will go down in our collective memory as our “VF Day from Hell", so I think that counts for something.
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| View of the valley |
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| View of the valley and mountains beyond |
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| Tranquil forest path |
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| Fidenza's Cathedral - an example of Romanesque architecture from the 12th century |
Wednesday, September 3rd
We were up early and at breakfast by 7:00. Planned route today was 16 miles to Sant’Andrea Bagni with more than 2000 feet of climbing between Fidenza and Sant’Andrea. We had arranged a transfer to our agriturismo at 4:00 and wanted to be sure we were on time.
Although we are approaching the foothills of the Apennine mountains, we aren’t there yet, according to our guidebook. Mountain foothills or not, we had five challenging climbs today, each more difficult than the one before. We’d climb up one hill and go down the other side and then repeat this process on the next, higher, hill. The fourth and fifth hills were extremely steep climbs, with the added challenge of muddy, uneven terrain on the fifth hill. We were so happy when we finally conquered the last hill, knowing the rest of the way was a gentle downhill.
The positive side to all this climbing was that we had incredible views all day long!
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| Our first climb of the day with a view of Fidenza in the background |
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| View of the valley below. As good as Jerry's camera is, this picture doesn't quite capture the brilliance of the colors. |
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| We had a steep uphill climb to get to the top of this hill and a very steep downhill descent on the other side. The track was muddy and slippery and it took us longer going downhill than it did than it did going uphill. |
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| Navigating our way up an uneven, rocky path |
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| Heading downhill toward the church |
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| Another view of the valley in the distance |
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