Month: July 2019

You’ve heard of the San Juan Compostela long walking route? Well there’s an Italian equivalent that goes from Canterbury England to Rome. Here’s the route:

I was driving back home from a party in the hills above Lucca and came past these walls around a sports field in this small town. I had to stop and check out the artwork. How cool is this?! It’s all about the Francigena pilgrimage route.

That’s all folks…!

The other day, riding across town (Pietrasanta Italy), I came across the horses I had seen in the town next door a year or two ago. Now they are in a field in a commercial warehouse area. Who knows why…

Further along…

On a narrow street in Pietrasanta, someone had transformed the gas meter boxes into poetry sites. Each box had its own poem.

This one reads:

I find you again

On the darkest paths,

Where if you take my hand

I don’t feel afraid.

And to finish, I saw this in the driveway to a house in the middle of the fields near the autostrada. Such detail…

As always, I wander as much as I can by bicycle. And I see something new every day.

Riding to Italian classes in Viareggio, I start with a couple kilometres of open fields alongside canals.

Halfway there, I paused in this flowered bower just to take a photo. After this point, I can ride through a lovely long shady forest of pines.

A few days ago, I went left where I always go right, and when I ride back through this village, I found this mural.

But I did go right first. The road goes up a valley behind Massa. Way way up into the mountains. All of it along a clear green blue steam. A hot weekend day, so the stream was full of families. I rode to where the asphalt became a dirt trail. Parked my bike against a rock, took off my helmet, walked down to the creek and sat down in the freezing delicious water, fully clothed. So refreshing!!! I was dry again within ten minutes…

Here’s a shot up the valley. This is what my riding zone looks like. Steep jagged mountains shaping the horizon.

Graffiti is everywhere.

At the intersection of roads just before Seravezza, there’s a water fountain that I like. Actually many of these high mountain roads have water fountains where people drive up with a stack of bottles and collect pure drinking water. I like the fountain for its sculpture. Seravezza is the marble area that was opened up by the Medici at the time of Michelangelo. He explored this area and some of his pieces were from here. The Medici were trying to break the near monopoly Carrara had on the marble business. Through their efforts, Seravezza and Pietrasanta became famous marble quarries.

A bit behind, but the memories are still vivid! All three of my brothers flew in on Friday afternoon and Tom’s wife Vikki joined us later that night.

We had a great time. Saw many friends, went to the mercato at Querceta to get the best roast chicken for our picnic lunch with Jacqueline. Had terrific meals, meter-long pizza in a garden in the hills with John and Anna Kia.

And had a huge adventure at the marble cave. We took the first tour of the day, which turned out to be the last. It was great fun. Then, when the van took the other group back out of the cave, the lights in the cave started to blow out. One after the other and eventually the emergency light went out too. We were in complete darkness, but of course we had our phones. It was very cool to be inside the middle of a mountain. The air was cool and damp. Small point of lights as we moved around.

Eventually the van came back. My seat was a bit wet, hmmm. The woman said it was coming down like a deluge outside. Well, how bad could it be?!

OMG, it could be amazingly bad. The van stopped inside the tunnel and we got out. A wall of water! The dirt parking lot was a lake, no, a river, a flood! Our car was in a lot on a small hill on the other side. One of the women, who drove a Range Rover, wasn’t sure her car could get through the water. I volunteered to bring our car, just hopeful that it would make it.

My hope flagged when I got to the uphill lot and it had 4-5 inches of water. Okay, no more dry feet. The car started up fine and I took it slowly through the flood waters. Charles and the others could sit in the dry. Whew…

Robin and I got the adventure bug and we forced our way across the river. My sandals were pretty marginal but they stayed on okay.

Robin went further up for more shots.

And the others moved the car to a safe place on the side, where they stayed stranded.

But, unlike the Austrian motorcyclist on the tour with us, we could eventually leave. The steep road downhill was swamped with flooding waters but they were only 4-5 inches deep, so the car made it okay. We drove hallway down and then stopped for some photos.