Walking in circles 2

Day two on the Grande Anello di Siena: Isola d'Arbia - San Rocco a Pilli, 15 km

First two days

Took the bus back to Isola d'Arbia and resumed my walk exactly where I left off yesterday. I immediately faced two obstacles: a railway line and a stream. Having located the railway underpass and forded the stream without difficulty - if the water was high it would have meant an extra hour's walk down to the bridge and back on the other side - I found myself once again on a dirt track through the wheat fields of the Crete Senesi.

Bees with a view

After passing by a few uninhabited farmhouses and a row of very much inhabited beehives, the dirt track descended into a small wood and then wound up to the fairytale castle on the hill: Poggio ai Frati: a 12th century fortified complex converted into a farmhouse in modern times, also now abandoned. 

Here I stopped for a snack before descending to a paved road and then turning onto the gravel road towards Mugnano. Climbing up to this cluster of houses, the road became paved, before dropping down again to an overpass crossing the Siena-Grosseto highway. From here I had to walk all the way up the ridge of Fogliano only to make a u-turn and walk back down the facing ridge to San Rocco a Pilli, my destination for the evening. This was the least pleasant part of the walk as it was on a paved road with no sidewalk; it is not actually a part of the ring walk, unless you need to access the town of San Rocco to access food and accommodations. For the route that skips the town, refer to this track on Google Maps. 

My reward for walking into San Rocco at the end of the day was not only an ice cream at the local bar but an evening of yoga and meditation to the sound of gongs and Tibetan bowls with my new friends Bianca and Carlo of Kalpa Taru yoga, who played an important role in getting me through the strictest phase of the lockdown in sound mental and physical condition. I finally met them in person and was able to confirm that they actually exist in real life, and not just on a screen, and we had a good-sized group spread out with appropriate distancing over the vast lawn of the villa that is home to Tuscany Training Camp, a training centre for runners from all over the world. 

The perfect ending to a day on the trail!