Rovigo – Polesella May 6

As I wanted to spend a night in the beautiful town of Ferrara, I had a choice of walking straight through today with 43km of almost totally asphalt or stopping for a night at the the little town of Polesella. And here I am!

The walk today started on a canal- side track full of walkers, runners, cyclists and roller blades as it was a Sunday.

A lady stopped to talk to me as she recognised me as a pilgrim and she’d done a walk along the Camino Francés to Santiago de Compostela herself. She was trying get get her dog to pose!

We spent about 10 minutes chatting and in the meantime her dog started digging quite a deep hole.

She is an Italian breed of dog from around here called a Lagotto Romagnolo. They’re bred to find and dig up truffles so she likes digging holes.

In Italy at this time of the year the air is sometimes full of floating white bits of fluff . These are hairy seeds from poplars and similar trees.

Where there’s lots of trees the stuff piles up on the ground .

There’s a VRG red arrow at the bottom of all these signs !

My fellow walkers became fewer and fewer as I got farther from town. Just as I thought I was on my own, a nun zoomed past on a bicycle.

In this flat countryside everything is straight.

I eventually reached the little town of Guarda Veneta and at the end of the perfectly straight road from Rovigo was this big levee bank.

At the top was a view of the River Po. These levee banks were raised considerably after disastrous flooding in 1951.

The Po is Italy’s longest river at about 650km, has 141 tributaries and at its widest is 500m across.

From here the walk was along the top of the bank with nice views across the plains.

There wasn’t a view of the river as there were tree plantations between the levee bank and the river.

Just before Polesella is the elegant 17th century Villa Morosini.

This is the bridge across the river at Polesella.

I shouldn’t have put my chocolate in the top pocket of my backpack – it melted !

Of utmost importance to long distance walkers is getting the washing done and dried every night as you can only carry limited changes of clothes. I had a nice sunny spot for the washing this evening!

The 17th century Cà Rosetta.

Pizza tonight

Tomorrow I’ve another day of asphalt – but thankfully just 23km – to Ferrara .