Italy to Santiago II Part 1, Via Domitia: Day 4 Chivasso - Gassino Torinese

After a day’s walk, everything has twice its usual value.

 – G.M. Trevelyan

Today's was only a short walk - fifteen kilometres - but still we are really enjoying the luxury of our rooms at the Istituto Figlie della Speranza in Gassino Torinese, only a day's walk outside Turin. 

Our day began with a half-hour train ride from Vercelli to Chivasso, to pick up the trail where we left off yesterday. We will not be going back to Mariella's house in Vercelli any more, so this was our first day carrying fully loaded backpacks. We didn't have much time to get them ready yesterday! First of all, I couldn't find my pocket knife, and figured it must have fallen out of my waist pack. It so happened that I had bought that knife in Vercelli, on a previous visit, so I went back to the same shop to get another. Only later did I discover the original knife, which I had stowed away in a "safe place" precisely to prevent it from falling out! 🤦‍♀️

After this detour, I arrived back at the house at the same time as a couple of Mariella's friends, who were coming over for a glass of wine and a chat. So I dropped my backpack, took off my boots and joined them - no time for a shower! When they left, Mariella's husband Antonio arrived and we sat chatting some more over the dinner he had kindly prepared for us. So it was late by the time we got around to sorting out our backpacks - and we wanted to be up in time for the eight o'clock train to Chivasso!

We made it, but then wasted some time searching for a place to get our pilgrim credentials stamped in Chivasso before giving up and heading out of town, taking a brief detour through a park to see the Presa Cavour. 

Built in 1866, the Presa Cavour takes water from the Po River to feed the Canale Cavour, an 83-kilometre irrigation canal that serves as a sort of "backbone" for the extensive network of canals that enabled the transformation and development of a vast territory — approximately 300,000 hectares — between the Dora Baltea, Ticino, and Po rivers. Built between 1863 and 1866 by the young Kingdom of Italy, the canal is named after Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, who died before construction began but is nonetheless considered the driving force behind this major project, Italy's greatest work of hydraulic engineering.

We crossed the Po River, turned right and followed the highway for a kilometre or so before turning off to walk along a pleasant dirt track, with a range of low hills on our left and cornfields - already harvested - stretching down to the river on our right, and the vast plain of the Po Valley beyond.

We walked through the small town of San Raffaele Piana and along the side of the Cimena canal. Soon we could see the dome of the church in Gassino Torinese ahead of us, echoed by the outline of another dome high up on the top of the hill behind it: La Superga, the basilica that overlooks Turin. By this time tomorrow, we'll be in the big city!!

The sunflowers are really beautiful at this time of year 😂

It's beginning to look a lot like Torino!

We climbed a slight hill - the first on this walk - and continued through the old town centre, which is pretty, but practically without places of commerce: we only saw one café. Most of the businesses must be down below, along the highway. We also went back down to the highway, to reach our princely lodgings.

The Daughters of Wisdom, an order founded in Poitiers by Louis de Montfort and Marie Louise Trichet in 1703, run a seniors' home in Gassino Torinese where they also make rooms available to pilgrims on a donation basis. As is often the case in large charitable institutions of this type, it took us some time to find the right door to get into this large building in a vast landscaped park, locate the sister hospitalier, get registered and shown to our room. But our patience was rewarded with the luxury of individual rooms, each with its own private toilet and shower complete with three fluffy towels, and nothing to do for the rest of the afternoon except wait for dinner! Things one might take for granted at home, but appreciates so much more after a long, hot day's walk - even on a fifteen-kilometre day! 

View of the chapel from my room 
(through mosquito netting)

Chivasso - Gassino Torinese 15 km

Almost in Turin!

Italy to Santiago II Part 1: Via Domitia Day 3: Lamporo - Chivasso

Let us walk, let us read, and let us dance; these three amusements will never do any harm to the world.

-  paraphrase of Voltaire,  posted along the path

Awoken by the church bells ringing next door to the cosy pilgrim hostel in Lamporo, we breakfasted with our hospitalier Luca, signed the hostel guestbook, popped our donation into the box, and set off.

Lamporo is a long, narrow village consisting of two rows of houses, on either side of its one and only street. At the end of the street and out of the town, we turned onto a dirt track through the fields. We crossed over the Canale Cavour, the 83 kilometre long canal built by order of Count Camillo Benso Cavour in 1861-1862 to permit irrigation of the rice paddies. Though on this stage we saw more cornfields than rice!

Walking into the first town on this stage, Saluggia, was particularly difficult for Mariella. Her nephew, disabled by Huntingdon's disease, a heriditary neurodegenerative condition, lived his final years in a care home in Saluggia. Andrea, whom I met in 2019, fought the disease with great courage and will to live, until it overcame him last year and at the age of 41 he followed his younger brother Simone, who had passed away only months earlier.  

As we came into Saluggia, we stopped at a chapel to remember them.

Saluggia is know as the "town of beans", and later in October it will be hosting an annual culinary festival in honour of the humble legume. But today, I settled for a custard-filled croissant from the local bakery instead, and ate it sitting on a bench in the main square. Not many pilgrims come through the town, judging by the number of locals who stopped to talk to us, and ask where we came from and where we were going!

We made our way out of the town and then walked along the side of the highway for a bit in order to cross the Dora Baltea river on a road bridge right next to the railway bridge. 

Crossing the Dora Baltea

We ignored the Via Francigena signs pointing off into the fields and stayed on this road right through Borgoregio, 12 kilometres from our starting point, and into Torazza Piemonte. Here we paid a visit to Graziella, one of the founders of the lovely pilgrim hostel in Lamporo where we spent the previous night. Graziella broke a leg in July and is spending some time undergoing rehabilitation in a care home until she is able to walk again. The care home was right on our route, and in fact Graziella can watch for passing pilgrims from the window of her room: how appropriate for a laid-up pilgrim hostess!

With Graziella in Torazza Piemonte 

At noon we left Graziella to her lunch, and ate ours picnic-style in a field just outside the town.  Then we continued along a service road beside the railway tracks to Castelrosso and followed the canal from there to Chivasso, the end of today's stage.

Water over water: a smaller canal crosses over the Canale Cavour

Flowering plants...

... and power plants on the way into Chivasso

Chivasso

Chivasso is a pretty town, worth exploring, but we put off further exploration until tomorrow morning, as we were tired and ready to call it a day.  There are no accommodations specifically for pilgrims in Chivasso, only hotels. But there is a train station, and it's only a half-hour ride to Vercelli - the distance it has taken us three days to walk! So we caught the first train back to Vercelli to spend a final night at  Mariella and Antonio's house and pick up some things that we had left there - such as warm jackets for wearing in the mountains!

Lamporo - Chivasso 22 km

Italy to Santiago II Part 1, Via Domitia: Day 2 Ronsecco - Lamporo

May I walk always in straight ways and shining to longed-for places 

- St. Gildas, A Pilgrim Prayer (516-570)

Today's path was straight - through shining rice fields. With a stop at a rice-growing farm with a restaurant, for the best risotto I've ever eaten!

Mariella's husband Antonio gave us a lift from Vercelli back to Ronsecco, where we left off walking yesterday, and we continued out of the village and onto a gravel road through the fields, heading toward the cooling towers of a distant power plant. 

We passed by Tenuta Darola, a castle built in 1457 and later converted into a large farming estate. Turning onto another dirt road through the fields, we spotted a patch of fluorescent orange in the distance and speculated whether it might be a traffic cone marking a pothole in the road, or a construction worker in a bright orange uniform. But it turned out to be a walker in a fluorescent orange t-shirt, sitting beside the road taking a break. Helena is Swedish and set out from Turin to walk to Rome, taking a detour along the Way of St. Francis to Florence, La Verna and Assisi on the way. We stopped and talked for a few minutes, took a selfie together, hugged, wished each other Buon Cammino and resumed walking in opposite directions.

As we passed another estate, Castelmerlino, we crossed paths with two Italian women on the final stage of their walk from the Mongenèvre pass to Vercelli. They had shared the pilgrim hostel in Lamporo with Helena the previous night, and told us it was a couple of hours' walk away.

By now we were very close to the power plant, where we turned onto a beautiful grassy path between two irrigation canals. Tiny black frogs hopped across the path and splashed into one or the other of the canals, while African sacred ibises rose into flight as we approached - huge white birds with a curved black bill and black wingtips. Their feathers dotted our path, as did the discarded shells of the crayfish that are their favourite food.

At noon on the dot, we found ourselves outside the restaurant at Tenuta Colombara, an estate where they not only grow rice but cook and serve it, with a menu consisting almost entirely of different varieties of risotto. The estate is on the site of a former pilgrim hostel; yet another sign that we were fated to go in and order a classic risotto al prosecco e parmigiano! 

The estate also rents rooms, but after polishing off an entire pot of deliciously creamy, cheesy risotto, we continued on along the canal for another six kilometres to the pilgrim hostel in Lamporo, where we were expected. The hostel is staffed during the summer months by volunteers from the association we belong to, Accoglienza Pellegrina. This week's volunteer is a local, and as he knows Mariella, who spent a week volunteering in the hostel a few years ago, he instructed us to pick up the keys at the local café, let ourselves in and make ourselves at home. Which we did, helping ourselves to cold drinks from the fridge, showering and running our clothes through the washing machine. 

The hospitalero, Luca, joined us later in the afternoon and together we cooked pasta with sauce, followed by salad and ice cream. We spent a convivial evening discussing walking pilgrimages, cycling trips, and experiences volunteering in pilgrim hostels. 

Ronsecco - Lamporo 18.5 km