This morning the rain had gone but there was a heavy fog And it was quite cold. Radicofani is a high town, at 800m. The various groups set off after the usual coffee and croissant at the local bar. I bought my panino for lunch from a lady who explained that there were only about 700 people in the town . There is strong community spirit and a lot of mutual respect amongst the various shop owners who recognise each other’s specialities. For example she could sell fruit to tourists but there is a fruit shop just up the road ! She said most of the young people leave town.

Looking back at the town unfortunately there was no clear view of the fortress above .  For a while it looked like we would be in for a sunny day as some blue sky appeared.

The birds were singing – before this walk I thought that all the birds in Italy had been shot by hunters, but you do hear a lot in the countryside . Mind you, you do also hear shotguns going off quite often as well.  But the second most common sound apart of course from traffic is that of dogs barking. Every farmer has at least one , sometimes kept in cages. Another interesting sound is that of frogs . There are a lot of ponds in rural Italy and they all seem to be full of happy little frogs.

I passed what seemed to be disused pigeon lofts and some were covered with wisteria.

  

 The bit of blue sky was the only I saw unfortunately and it started raining in the late morning and kept going for the rest of my walk.

I passed from the region of Tuscany into Lazio (Latium). That meant that I had walked the full length of Tuscany from where I had gone over the Cisa Pass a few weeks back.

 I crossed the Gregorian bridge over the Rigo. In the old days they used to lose a lot of pilgrims here, drowned whilst trying to cross, especially after rain.  Pope Gregory XIII in 1578 built this bridge. It’s a bit dicey for pilgrims crossing it now with all the traffic , but it’s still safer than fording the torrent !

After a bit more unfun walking on busy roads I arrived at Acquapendente. A strange thing was that a large number of motor homes were heading north, almost in convoy. Some strange seasonal migration ?

The hostel is a lot less crowded as this is a bigger town with several hostels. We all have the problem of trying to get things to dry after two wet days. Both my ‘fast drying’ shirts are wet as well as two out of three pairs of socks.

Tomorrow is forecast to be fine !