Acquapendente is a nice town with character and not at all touristy.

   The lady who let us into the hostel recommended a nearby restaurant that offers a ‘pilgrims’ menu ‘.  The people who manage the hostels by the way are all volunteers.

The pilgrims menu turned out to be four courses, wine, water and coffee all for €15 say $AU20. The only stipulation was that all the courses were the ‘chef’s surprise’. I warned the waitress that Brian from Ireland could probably absorb a liter of wine just with the jug placed next to him , but she wasn’t fazed by this.

http://www.albergotoscana.net/pagine/ristorante.html
The three of us had a great meal and consumed 2 liters of red wine, plus an extra 1/4 for Brian to have with his desert ! We gave them a nice tip.

Brisn avoided being photographed as he didn’t want to blow his cover

The newsagent sold me two newspapers for the price of one after I told him I needed them to dry my shoes overnight. Unfortunately they were still wet in the morning which was to cause me some angst. My socks absorbed the moisture and I had sore toes all day.

Before leaving Acquapendente in the morning, we paid a visit to the 10th century crypt of the cathedral .

The countryside we traversed in the morning was quite flat and open agricultural land.

We passed a number of solar power farms .

An abandoned boot

About half way through the day the road descended and we got our first views of Lake Bolsena. This is a large crater lake , about 13 km across  and up to 180m deep.

There seemed to be a ring of clouds around the lake, perhaps due to the different rate of heating of the earth and water during the day.

One of the nice things about  this walk is that you often run across the same groups of people at different times and on different days as your paths cross.

You’ll notice in this photo that I had bare feet, as by this stage of the day my toes were quite sore from the wet socks. It was a short 20 km walk, but hard for this reason . Hopefully everything will be fine for tomorrow which is a walk of over 30km.

Another feature of the VF is that every now and then you come across a spot where people place a rock in passing . I wonder how these start ?

 I have nice accommodation run by nuns In Piazza S Cristina and there’s even an adjoining terrace for the washing

 The street from the old town down to lake is lined with huge plane trees planted around 150 years ago . They obviously like the climate and soil.