i left Pontremoli a little sadly as it seemed such an interesting and unique place. i felt like it exhisted almost in an alternative universe where the mediaeval times had melded with an age of technology to produce a hybrid culture where moss and brick and little dark alleys blend in seemlessly with laptops, ipads and mobile phones. the sky was very, very dark as i navigated my way under strange low-hanging bridges that joined houses on opposite sides of the street for no apparant reason and then i hit the hills just as the rain came down. luckily it was only a light shower and as i made way on i bumped into Danilo, the Italian guy i'd met a couple of days before. i thought he was still a few days behind me but he'd covered a far distance the previous day to try and beat the storm. he was a funny chap - always covering his face with his hands when he talked in a very italian way. he said he'd been porcini mushroom hunting in the forest on the way down the pine mountains yesterday but that this summer had been super-dry so there weren't that many. i very proudly showed him a picture of some mushrooms i'd stumbled across which he said weren't porcini (i was very disappointed - i'm getting into the idea of being a Mushroom Hunter) and then we carried on down the road as the rain started again. eventually Danilo made his way off into a nearby village for a coffee but i carried on, suspicious of the rain. because it was looking better and the road was getting busier i decided to head up further into the hills even though i didn't fancy having to climb up waterfalls of mud if it started raining heavily. i've done that before and its just not enjoyable. about 2 hours later i bumped into Jules, the Belgium banker: the Camino seemed to be getting rather communal in some ways! Jules was ok but he said that he'd covered 39km the previous day and was really at the limit of his endurance - he'd had a heart bypass about 3 years ago so was careful about how far he pushed himself. we chatted briefly and then i headed off up the slope. this was actually more arduous than i'd anticipated as the rain the previous day made the path a bit mushy plus all the reddy autumn leaves were mulching up under my feet. the path itself was a mixture of deep furrows, almost as if a river had run down and left tracks for us to follow. there were large pieces of granite and smaller clumps of gravel as well as all the branches and twigs and fallen trees that you expect in the deep forest and to cut a long story short it ended up like an obstacle course. visibilty wsn't too good either as the higher i went the more mist came down: the slope became harder, the mist denser and the humidity was so bad that sweat was pouring down my face, down my arms, down my legs. even so the rain held off even if the humidity didn't and i stumbled up and down forest paths wondering when it would ever end. the mist itself made the forest seem quieter than it probably was and all i could hear was the sound of my own heavy panting as my respiratory and cardiac systems seemed to be in overdrive. reaching a small town half-way to my destination of Aulla that day, i had a coffee (well, 3) and some fruit and was just getting ready to move off when Jules turned up. it did occur to me in the middle of the morning that if either of us had fallen down a slope or got injured then no-one would know where we were or what had happened. with this cheery thought in my mind we both started up and i started to chat with Jules about why was on this trip. as someone just said to me recently i shouldn't be surprised doing a pilgrimage when i find out that people are religious. i guess on the Santiago route it was very secular and my reasons for walking the VF are primarily to see Italy, to have some crazy adventures and also to really push myself out of my comfort zone. Jules, as it turns out, is a Catholic and is doing the VF so he can get to a place called Fatima where a 'miracle' happened in the early 1900's. he said that even most of his best friends didn't know this but that he was obsessed by Fatima and had read countless books and stories about what had taken place there. this kinda took me by surprise: often radical faith is hidden behind a very calm facade and so it was with Jules. we did end up quite a long time talking about matters of faith, spiritual beliefs, the state of the world and everything inbetween but it seemed as if God wasn't happy with either of us as the heavens opened. up until that point i'd been wet through sweating but this was something else: it was like someone had dropped a swimming pool on our heads. i had my raincoat covering my pac and by this time we were near the roads again so the roads it was. the rain was so bad that water came over the top of my boots and i was saturated from the knees down. every step i took squeezed water out that was then sucked right back in. i lost Jules on the road in the storm as i was just focused on getting to Aulla which i did about an hour and half later. luck smiled on me (after frowning all afternoon) as i found a hotel immediately and just threw all my clothes on the bathroom floor before i lay on the bed soaked through and exhausted. there wasn't much to do after that except eat and sleep - both of which i managed to do excessive amounts of - before once more being woken up by the 6am alarm the next morning. this day was my last before my planned rest day - i just had to get to Sarzana 20km away. according to my map the route ascended sharply in the first hour but then it descended slowly all the way to Sarzana & it looked an easy day. i should have known better. the first hour was actually ok. the dark rainclouds in the sky held off as i went up & up & up but the mist got thicker and thicker. there was a heavy cloudburst but i was undercover at the time and was feeling pretty pleased with myself - fatal mistake that that was. the thing that threw me was passing through a tiny village called Vecchietto perched so high on the mountainside it seemed almost as it it was falling off. it was quite, quite eerie - just one long narrow street, houses piled up high on either side and no sound at all, just mist, and mist, and more mist. and cats. up until this point in virtually all italian villages i'd only really seen dogs which every house has at least one of. i'd seen one or two cats here or there but nothing to talk about. in Vecchietto cats were everywhere. they sat on windows, in doorways, in small open barns, on empty cars, in the middle of the street. black cats, ginger, white, tabby, old, young, big, small, skinny, fat. and all with wild yellow eyes and jet black pupils staring at me as i passed through. some ran away when i drew near, but most sat and watched in groups of 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 and they were all completely silent. it was as if all the people in the village had been turned into cats overnight and were waiting for the rays of the sun to turn them back to being human. ok i know my imgaination was in overdrive but it really was very, very strange and despite myself i hurried out of that village as fast as i could. 2 hours later i'd had a reasonable descent but couldn't find where i was on my map so i had to flag down a passing car when i found a small country road and luckily the guy driving could speak English. i confirmed what i'd already suspected - i'd taken the wrong route and had walked 2 hours in the opposite direction from which i needed to go. good luck followed bad pretty rapidly and the guy, his wife and kid (the kid = a 5-year old Mushroom Hunter so they told me !!!) gave me a lift back to the place where i'd taken a wrong turn: the Village of the Silent Cats
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