Joanne's long walks: Italy to Santiago II Part 1, Via Domitia: Day 4 Chivasso

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!