Il cammino regala un tempo prezioso
- painted on a wall in Bollengo
After making my own breakfast at the hostel in San Germano, I set off early, walking past the balmetti, traditional wine cellars taking advantage of the natural flow of cold air out of the crevices in the mountain, which I had visited for food and wine the previous evening. At 7:30 in the morning they were all closed, but in the daylight I could get a better idea of what they looked like from the outside. There is a long row of them at the foot of the mountain, only some of which are open to the public, while others are privately owned or derelict. The street the wine cellars are on is aptly named Via del Buon Umore: "good mood street"!
I left the wine cellars behind, crossed a few cornfields, and by the time the sun rose above the mountain tops, just before eight, I was in Borgofranco di Ivrea.
I left the village behind, and with it the Alps. Here the valley of the Dora Baltea river widens out, and while one last tall mountain peak towered above me on the right, the mountains on my left were tapering down to low hills. Piemonte means "foot of the mountain", and the reason for the region's name is perfectly obvious here!
The Via Francigena took me out of the town and into a thicket of beech trees. At the village of Montalto Dora I abandoned the Via Francigena to take a shortcut proposed in Sandy Brown's guidebook, climbing a steep paved road up to the chapel of Santa Croce rather than following the official route all the way around Lake Pistono.
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| Shortcut vs official route |
Santa Croce was the first of a series of roadside chapels that I passed on the road between here and Ivrea, suggesting that this was a much-travelled road in the past, and in fact at one point the road is paved with old cobblestones. Pretty to look at, but hard on the feet!
The old road eventually took me onto a newer road, open to traffic, leading into the city of Ivrea.
Ivrea
Ivrea originated as a Celtic town called Yporegia. The Romans conquered the town in the year 100 BC and gave it a more easily pronouceable name, Eporedia, which became Ivrea in Italian.
I entered the city at the top end, by the castle, constructed in 1358 - 1395.
In the year 1676 the main tower of the castle, which was used to store gunpowder, was struck by lightning, and the resulting explosion killed about a hundred people, decapitated the tower and destroyed the sections of wall closest to it, along with the walkways around the top of the castle walls, all subsequently rebuilt.
Across from the castle is the cathedral, built around the year 1000 by Bishop Warmondo on the site of an earlier 4th-century church which was, in turn, constructed on the site of a Roman temple. A Roman sarcophagus has been adapted for use as an altar in the crypt, the only remaining part of the 10th-century church; the part above ground was reconstructed in Baroque style in 1785.
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| The bishop's residence and the cathedral of Ivrea seen from the back |
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| And from the front |
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| The crypt |
Leaving the cathedral, I descended a staircase to the main pedestrian street of Ivrea, Via Palestro, where I stopped at a café for a second breakfast of espresso with a scoop of ice cream and a fresh chocolate-filled pastry 😋.
I needed one more thing before leaving Ivrea: a stamp for my pilgrim credential! And I found one at the Via Francigena information point in the roundabout at the end of Via Palestro, where a kind volunteer gave me a stamp and a Via Francigena pin, called to book me into tomorrow's hostel, and took my photo by the yellow pilgrim cutout symbolising the Via Francigena.
Walking out of the city on paved roads, I soon came to a pleasant path among the trees, heading straight toward a high, even ridge. This is the first of a series of morenic ridges formed where the glaciers stopped their advance at the end of various ice ages and began to retreat, leaving behind vast deposits of rocky debris which the ice had accumulated and carried down from the Alps.
It so happens that I stood on the top of that very same ridge in February 2020, on my last weekend away before the Covid lockdown. At that time I participated in a weekend
seminar about natural navigation with walker, hiking guide and writer
Franco Michieli. On the second day of the seminar our group went walking over these ridges, learning to interpret the landscape and use the sun and shadows to find our way; as a final test, Franco left us at the top of that ridge, divided us into pairs, and left us to find our own way back to the starting point of our walk, where we had parked our cars. I am happy to report that everyone in the group made it back! 😄
Today, I looked at the ridge from below and followed the Via Francigena around its base, climbing only slightly to a small lake in the woods. Here I met a young man who was walking from Zurich to Finale Ligure, in order to go for a swim in the sea! I'm sure glad I don't live in a landlocked country like Switzerland, and it's a lot easier for me to walk to the beach 😆!
The young man said he had been making up his own route along the way, but kept getting lost, and so he decided to follow the trail markers of the Via Francigena for as long as it was convenient in relation to his route. Perhaps he should attend one of Franco Michieli's seminars and learn to find his way around! 😅
Several cornfields and poplar groves later, the Via Francigena came out onto the road to Burolo, where there is no longer a pilgrim hostel, so I followed the road a couple of kilometres further, to Bollengo, where I had booked an Airbnb flat just a block off the route. And, it turns out, right at the foot of the morenic ridge!
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| The colourful town of Bollengo |
Today's accommodation: Airbnb attic flat above the home of Beatrice and her family. It cost the same as a room at one of the bed & breakfast places in the village, and I get a whole flat to myself! With a hydromassage tub 😁
San Germano - Ivrea - Bollengo 22 km
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