Crossing the River Po

it seems incredible that a week has passed since i last blogged. part of the problem lies in accessing the internet as all the hotels and cafes expect you to carry your own laptop which is not something i would remotely encourage someone to do over 900km across the Alps to Rome. so where was i a week ago? ah yep, limping out of Mortara. i won't deny it was painful to leave but my day of rest had reinvigorated my stubborn determination - or did until i looked out the window to see it was raining. but thats part of the Camino so i put on my plastic raincoat and limped off as quickly as a could, which really wasn't quick at all. i think i must have looked like a drunk plastic bag staggering down the street. the rain eased a little as the morning went on - the wheatfields were covered in mist for miles around which made the countryside seem rather eerie. small rivers criss-crossed fields, large herons flapped slowly out of deep ditches and the only sound i could hear were my trekking poles and the rustle of my raincoat. the VF signs in the area were consistent and regular which meant that i didn't get lost and after some hours (taking it slowly) the rain cleared, the mist burnt away and the sun came back as fierce as ever. i rolled into a town called Garlasco late in the day (after meeting a local VF historian mentioned in my guidebook on the way) & that night i slept well. the next day I headed off into the mist again, passing through tiny villages with 2 or 3 churches sometimes with their bells chiming which made it seem that little bit more magical and the day took me on towards a national park called Park Ticino. This was a park full of wildlife: grey stately herons still rising and flapping slowly and grandly from the ditches ahead; clusters of ducks coloured brown and green; tiny black coots and big white storks. there were even rabbits that crossed the path ahead, barely stopping before they hopped off quickly into the cornfields. the mosquitos had quietened down a little but they still rose up in black clouds at unexpected moments causing me to frantically run down gravelly paths with my 10kg packpack weighing me down. Park Ticino was a highlight not only of that day but of my trip so far. it seemed to go on forever: a day of birds and butterflies, of green fields and a brilliant blue river that gently wound its way around the contours of the forest. rather unexpectedly i went through a copse of trees and found a restaurant on the side of the riverbank, looking over flat sandy banks with white storks and black ducks resting in the midday sun. here i stopped for a hour and had the most delightful lunch of pasta funghi, beer, lemon tart and coffee. i simply didn't want to leave, but of course i was only dreaming of lost pleasure. it was a longer finish to the day than i'd expected - sometimes the distances you have to travel seem longer or shorter than expected and this day they were longer. the sight of the Dome of Michel Maggiore appearing over the tops of the trees as i approached Pavia was something i'll remember for the rest of my life. Pavia is a big city dating back to pre-Roman times when it was known as Ticium - an important military site during the Roman Empire. Under the Goths it became a fortified citadel, in the 12th century it was a self-governing commune; the Spanish took it over until the early 1700's followed a bit later by the Austrians and then the French under Napoleon. its had quite a history. i walked into it via the famous covered bridge and then (frustratingly) had to spend about 2 hours looking for accomodation. after trekking for 6-8hrs a day somewhat optimistically you kinda hope that a hotel or hostel will just appear on route. this optimism is often seriously skewed and having to search small streets for the vaguest sign of a hotel late in the day can really test your mental state. of course i ended up booking in at the very first hotel that i'd initally rejected as it'd been too expensive. i'd also been (in my tired, frustrated and irritable state) quite blunt with the receptionist when he'd told me the price (60 euros). when he saw me stagger back 2 hours later he mananged to knock 5 euos off which saved both our faces. i booked in, threw my boots over to the other side of the room and just collapsed insensible on the bed. i can only try to describe the pain. if you imagine that someone has a rolling pin and the spend 5 minutes battering the soles of your feet and then suddenly stop then that feeling was the one i had lying on the bed just at that time. after an hour or so i got myself up and moving. Pavia had such a great history that i wanted to get out and see some of it which i eventually did (despite thinking that i should have brought a collapsable wheelchair with me as it've been easier to get around). it was quite a city and one i would have liked to have spent more time exploring, but i now had a timetable to keep to as my mate Sasha from San Francisco was on a 2-week biking trip from Rome to Florence and we'd arranged to meet on 18th September in Sarzana - just under 300km away. i got some food for the next day from a local store and limped around tiny cobbled streets (damn those cobbles!!!) before finding a little outside pizzaria surrounded by vines. i was just limping in when suddenly a car came screeching down the street, 2 guys got out, flashed police badges and then demanded to see the contents of the bag i was carrying. what on earth was going on? worried in case i was in possession of an illegal croissant i handed the bag over which they examined with great suspiscion, and even more so when i communicated to them that i was English. when i also said 'Australiano' they suddenly beamed, gave me the bag back, waved and drove off. it was a bit surreal. i turned round to sit down and get a pizza only to find the owners and their children all standing there with folded arms and raised eyebrows. i tried to act innocent but somehow felt very guilty. even so they made me great pizza. leaving Pavia was a bit melancholy as i liked the feel of the place and would have liked to have spent more time there. despite that it didn't take long to pick up the route back onto the VF and i was soon back in the cornfields, walking longside a system of canals that'd been built in the late 19th century and heading off into the deep italian countryside. my destination for the night was a palce called Santa Christina which was a very small town where i was hopefully going to stay at the local church hostel. the sun shone very, very hot and hard all day and it was tough going, but the countryside changed as i went which disatracted me: the rice paddy-fields had virtually gone now, and cornfields were in the ascendance. sometimes the corn was taller than me on both sides and it was like walking down a road with walls made of cornreeds on both sides. i met another traveller that day - Thomas from Germany who was cycling down to where grapes were being harvested in Tuscancy. we hit it off straight away and agreed to meet up when i passed through in a couple of weeks. the sobering thing about cycling is that he could cover in an hour what took me a day so i told him to get some good wine in for when we met up again. i got to Santa Christiana about 3pm burnt by the sun. the town was so small and quiet that i hlaf expected tumbleweed to be blowing through. one slightly unexpected thing that i've found about rural italy is the number of black, indian and asian people that there are. italy is much more multicultural than i thought and not just in the cities. to my great surprise in this one-horse town the local bar was run by Vietnamese! they were lovely and fed me beer and crisps before i found the local church (next to the bar) and settled into the spare room above the local youth club that the local Priest ran. the Priest was actually a lovely guy (my guidebook gave him a glowing report) and he really did seem to be a pillar of the community. all the local kids were there playing football, table-tennis, cards and using a kitchen to cook up some food. i got showered and washed some clothes and settled down at the local bar to read thinking that i'd have a nice early night. some hope. what i hadn't anticipated was that i'd arrived on friday night and the youth club turned into the local disco. i went to bed at 8 and then for the next 3 hours had to endure screaming, yelling, loud euro-pop and Lady Gaga at top volume before their parents arrived, spent another half an hour screaming at the kids to leave and then finally at around 11 it all went quiet. then the buzzing began. i got up, turned on the light and saw that the walls of the place were covered in mozzies the size of small cows. i had no repellent, no incense and no hope on God's earth. the next morning i felt like i'd been dancing the Rumba in my sleeping bag all night & the bits of me that weren't bitten were red with slapping. i'd even slapped myself awake at various times so i wasn't in the best of moods leaving the village and it didn't get any easier that day. i should have seen it coming. at this point i just want to try and describe what it's like following the Camino trail in the countryside. imagine that you're entering a maze. there's 3 entrances to that maze and one of them has a sign saying 'Via Francigena'. you follow that one which leads you to an intersection where you can make one of 3 choices. there are no signs so you weigh up the options. one path is overgrown with a few indications that people have passed by. the second is well used and the third curves away in the distance, following a small river. you take the well-used path. this goes on for half an hour before branching into another 2 paths. there are no signs. both paths look as good as the other. one heads into fields, the other by some trees. you take the trees. after another half an hour the path peeters out by a ditch. you go back to where it branched off and take the path into the fields. this leads you on and on and on with the path becoming more and more overgrown until there is no longer any path. you are stuck in the middle of the countryside with no path, no signs, no directions and no-one to ask. its also boiling hot and you're running out of water. for no points and no prizes what do you do? look for a bloody church in the distance (or any kind of visible structure) and stagger on, thats what you do. i would also say that this is not an unusual or rare occurance - this happens quite regularly and has become quite a regular part of my world at present. i guess i've learnt to deal with it and work my way out but it isn't easy and the morning i left Santa Christina was one of the worst days for this happening. i traversed ditches, fell into nettles, got scrapped by trees and encrusted by mud. after quite some time and most of the morning i staggered out of the countryside feeling like Robinson Crusoe being washed up on some unknown island somewhere. i think even the locals were frightened by my wild staring eyes. i found a bar and threw myself through the door only to hear Kate Bush singing 'Hounds of Love'. Now dear Kate is one of my favourite singers and 'Hounds of Love' a favourite song but the lyrics of 'I'll be running up that road/ i'll be running up that hill/with no problem' were rather too ironic to let pass. 'i've been running up that f*cking road and i'*ve been running up that f*cking hill and a few bloody f*cking fields as well luv and there HAS been quite a few f*cking problems' i found myself muttering madly. i found out afterwards that a local farmer fed up with VF pilgrims passing through his fields had uprooted all the VF signage and left us all to wander the countryside getting lost. that was nice of him & i hope something lovely happens to him very soon. anyway, i'd made a telephone call the previous night to a chap called Danilo who runs a riverboat service across the River Po & said i'd be there about 11am. after getting so lost it was already 11am and i was over 5km away. it was also blazing hot so i had to really pull myself together. luckily the trail for the next section rose above the cornfields and was very clear so i basically had to do a forced march to get myself there in reasonable time. i'd filled up with water at the cafe and marched so hard in the next hour that i drank 2 litres straight. of course when i arrived Danilo had been and gone but he came back and the sight of his little speedboat arriving was glorious. he then powered the boat up, turned the tiller and off we shot down the river. the exhilaration was electrifying - it was another moment of sheer unadultered pure & complete pleasure. it made everything worthwhile