I am a small person in a large place.
- a pilgrim on the Via Francigena, quoted in the Confraternity of Pilgrims to Rome annual newsletter (2025)
Another day walking along the embankment beside the river Reno. But it was far from boring, today - so much beauty along the way!
First, the amazing cloud formations of the autumn morning sky.
Then, a few kilometres down river, the flamingoes, herons and swans of the Valli di Comacchio. The gravel track atop the embankment passed between waters, with the river Reno on the right and the lagoons known as the Valli del Comacchio on the left.
A bit of history: Valli di Comacchio
The Valli di Comacchio are a series of brackish lagoons and wetlands that formed around the tenth century close to the Adriatic coast as a result of subsidence of the soil and silting up of the coastal zone. Around the year 1000 they were filled with fresh water from the recurrent flooding of the rivers; from the sixteenth century on, sea water gradually infiltrated the lagoons, resulting in today's brackish water-filled basins.
The wetlands once covered 73,000 hectares, but as a result of various land reclamation projects over the centuries they have now been reduced to 13,000 hectares.
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| The extent of the wetlands before and after reclamation |
The first attempts at draining the marshes of the area probably date back to Etruscan times. The Benedictine monks of Pomposa made a major effort just after the year 1000, and the d'Este family of Ferrara conducted repeated land reclamation campaigns with the goal of improving the productivity of the countryside within their realm, and therefore their income, in order to pay off the debts they had incurred commissioning palaces and artworks. The 19th-century Grande Bonificazione Ferrarese finally succeeded, with the aid of mechanical pumps, in converting a large portion of the swamps into arable land, making the area one of Italy's most productive for growing cereal crops. The actual digging of the canals, however, was still carried out by hand, using spades and wheelbarrows; thousands and thousands of landless peasants from the Veneto and Romagna regions were employed in this backbreaking work, sleeping in insalubrious makeshift huts on the edge of the swamps. Once the reclamation project was completed, their employment was terminated and they were just as desperately poor as before; this mass of dispossessed workers formed the ranks of the revolt of 1897, which was, needless to say, harshly repressed.
(From Wikipedia and from Carlo Bassi, Breve ma veridica storia di Ferrara, a copy of which was on hand in my B&B at Monestirolo)
The remaining wetlands are now protected, and are home to the greatest variety of birds in Italy: 300 different species. I wish I brought my binoculars!
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| Flamingoes - in the distance. |
Sorry but I didn't bring a telephoto lens - though I met a man carrying one, and it looked as heavy as my entire backpack! 😄
I also met several cyclists along the way. There is a famous cycling route through the area that includes the Argine degli Angeli - the embankment of the angels: a raised embankment with a gravel cycling path and water on either side. I passed by the beginning of it.
I also passed by a monument marking the spot where Giuseppe Garibaldi was given a safe place to rest as he fled from Rome toward Venice on August 8, 1849 - just four days after the death of his wife Anita. A few kilometres further on, I left the lagoon to cross a bridge over the river Reno on the highway that bears the same name as the route I am walking - the SS Romea - and then followed a gravel road parallel to the highway, passing by Fattoria Guiccioli, where Anita breathed her last on August 4, 1849 (see yesterday's post for the story).
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| Fattoria Guiccioli |
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| Fattoria Guiccioli seen from across the canal |
There is a monument marking the spot of Anita's death, but it was 200 metres off the route, and by that time I had walked more than 20 kilometres and, having several more to go, I wasn't up for any detours, however short! At Fattoria Guiccioli I crossed two canals, came out by a truck stop, Trattoria Antica Romea, where I imagine the food would have been fantastic, and it would have been great to have their stamp on my pilgrim credential, so I probably should have stopped... but at the time I just wanted to get away from the heavy traffic of the highway and the giant trucks in the trattoria parking lot, so I turned onto the gravel road/pathway beside the canal, passed a sandwich stand for truck drivers who are too cheap to eat at the trattoria, and kept on walking.
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| Mirella's sandwich stand by the SS Romea |
Along the canal I had a closer look at the trabucchi fishing nets that I had been seeing for a while in the Reno river. At regular intervals, quite close together, along the shore of the river, and then the canal, were these nets that can be lowered by winches into the water, where they are left for a while before the four corners are closed together and they are raised out of the water, hopefully with a fish or two in them. Some of these fishing stations were very simple, with just a small platform and a hand-operated winch, while others included a cabin, an electric winch, even a barbecue area with table and chairs for instantly cooking and enjoying the freshly caught fish!
I followed the canal all the way into Casalborsetti, which is not a particularly nice town. But it has a supermarket, and a beer hall, where I sat over an incongruous pint of Guinness writing this blog post while waiting for the supermarket to reopen at 4:30 in the afternoon so I could get groceries for dinner.
The supermarket was not a particularly nice supermarket, either, but I found the ingredients for a healthy dinner and then set off through the town centre and along a cycling path beside the highway for another two and a half kilometres to my campground, Camping Reno. I checked into my bungalow, left my backpack there and went straight down to the beach.
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| Casalborsetti, on the canal |
The sea!!!
I've walked all the way from the Alps to the Adriatic... in fact, all the way from the delta of the Elbe River, almost on the North Sea, to the delta of the Po, on the Adriatic Sea!!
It wasn't really swimming weather, and looked like it might rain some time soon, but I waded up to my ankles and sat on the beach for some time before retiring to my cute wooden cabin for the night.
Anita - Casalborsetti 28 km
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