Via di San Francesco Day 13: Loreto di Gubbio - Gubbio

Laudato si', mi' Signore, per frate vento et per aere et nubilo et sereno et onne tempo, per lo quale a le tue creature dài sustentamento.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Wind, and through the air, cloudy and serene,and every kind of weather through which You give sustenance to Your creatures.

- Saint Francis, Cantico del Sole 

Walked only 11 km today - then the same number sightseeing within the city of Gubbio!

The sun was already hot when we set out from Loreto at eight a.m., descending into the Chiascio valley and following a little-travelled road between the wheat fields of the valley floor all the way to Gubbio. A cool breeze accompanied us all the way, making the sunshine bearable and threatening to blow our hats off! 

We came to the Roman theatre before we arrived in the city itself. All of the medieval city of Gubbio is actually built over Roman and pre-Roman early Umbrian ruins, and many of the artefacts that have been found may be seen in the city's museums. 

The Museo Civico in the Palazzo dei Consoli, which we visited while waiting until it was time to check into our hostel, contains among its many treasures a set of seven bronze tablets discovered in 1444 and dating back to the third to first century BC, engraved in the ancient Umbrian tongue, using letters borrowed from the Etruscan and Latin alphabets. 

At the top of the museum is a loggia with a magnificent view over the valley, and a picture-gallery in what used to be the great hall of the palace, with a fountain in the middle of it - which must have been a very impressive feat of plumbing in medieval times, especially considering that Gubbio is built up the side of a mountain! 

Even higher up the side of the mountain is the cathedral, and above that, the city walls. 

My explorations also took me a little way up a gorge where goats clung to the rocky cliffs on one side of the canyon, while fortifications were incorporated into the rock on the other side. I walked as far as the site of a former convent and water mill. 

Returning to the city centre, I popped into the chapel of the Confraternità della Misericordia and drew back the curtain of the confessional on the left side of the nave, as instructed: inside was an envelope marked with my name!

No, I am not being sent on a secret mission: I had simply asked the organisation which takes care of pilgrims on the Way of Saint Francis for another pilgrim credential, as mine is almost full of stamps. Their office was closed today so they left it there for me. 

I also took a look at the chapel which is supposedly on the site of the cave of a wolf which had been terrorising the people of Gubbio and decimating their flocks until Saint Francis came to the town. He is said to have talked to the wolf, reasoned with her and struck a bargain: the people of the town would feed the wolf if she would promise not to eat their sheep but live in peace with all living things. The wolf lived peacefully for two years in the town before dying of old age and being buried beside the chapel, where indeed the bones of a wolf were found when the church was renovated in 1872.

Gubbio is where Saint Francis came to take refuge after breaking off relations with his family, when he had angered his father by selling off his stock of fabrics (his father was a wealthy cloth merchant) to raise funds with which to repair the derelict church of San Damiano. He began his ministry here, assisting the lepers in the leper colony outside the town (the site of which we will pass tomorrow morning). The place where he lived in Gubbio is now the church and monastery of San Francesco, where we are spending the night as guests of the monastic community. In fact we are the only guests this evening, and so we have a whole wing of the monastery to ourselves! 

We cannot use the communal kitchen due to covid restrictions, so we went out to enjoy a local specialty, crescia: an unleavened bread eaten with a variety of fillings, mostly cured meats and cheeses, though we tried vegetarian versions. Mine is filled with a mixture of cabbage and potatoes! 

Loreto - Gubbio 11 km

Via di San Francesco Day 12: Pieve dei Saddi - Loreto di Gubbio

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower 

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand 

And Eternity in an hour

- William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

Walking in a cloud of butterflies. Silently watching as a deer crosses the path ahead of you. Observing clouds gathering and crossing the sky. Listening to the wind blowing through the pines. 

These are the things that make a tough day of walking worthwhile; the things to bear in mind when struggling to climb that last big hill of the day under the afternoon sun. 

After saying goodbye to Sara and Veronica, the two volunteers who made our stay at Pieve dei Saddi so special, we left the church and hostel behind and walked just under ten kilometres along a gravel road through the woods to the medieval town of Pietralunga. 

Leaving Pieve de Saddi

Pietralunga

Coming into Pietralunga the hard way

Pietralunga

Other than a few people in the village, we saw nobody all day, except for one Swiss pilgrim walking in the opposite direction and a couple of Macedonian (?) shepherds with their dogs, who gave us no trouble. And of course the lady who gave us the key to our comfortable bed&breakfast in Loreto, B&B La Valle, ten kilometres before Gubbio. Tomorrow we will have only a couple of hours of walking in the morning, and then spend the rest of the day exploring Gubbio! 

Pieve dei Saddi - Loreto di Gubbio 26 km

Via di San Francesco Day 11: Città di Castello - Pieve a Saddi

Il pellegrinaggio ha senso se fatto a piedi; è un avvicinamento lento, è un tempo: non solo il raggiungimento della metà. Il pellegrinaggio ha a che fare con la solitudine, è perdersi per ritrovarsi.

(A pilgrimage has meaning if done on foot; it means drawing ever nearer slowly, it is a time space, not just reaching your goal. Pilgrimage is about solitude, it is about losing oneself to find oneself again.) 

- Erri De Luca

Today's walk was tough on the feet: almost all on the asphalt, and under the sun. We left Città di Castello behind, walking along the shoulder of a provincial highway which luckily had little traffic. At Bar Sasso, the last bar on the day's stage, we ran into three more pilgrims we had seen around town the previous evening, and we set off again together, soon leaving the highway to walk on a minor country road. The sun was shining but a refreshing breeze made for better walking conditions than yesterday 's humidity. After a break at the fountain by the turn-off to Candeggio, we kept together as a group because we had heard there were sheep with sheepdogs in the area, but we did not see them. 

Having kept up a good pace all morning, before noon we had reached our destination, Pieve a Saddi, a paleo-Christian basilica dating back to the fourth century, most likely built over a Roman temple of Jupiter. The church is dedicated to Saint Crescentinus, a Roman centurion who converted to Christianity and was martyred on the spot where the church now stands.  Before being decapitated on June 1, 303, Crescentinus is said to have saved the region from infestation by serpents, represented by a dragon in the fresco in the church but more likely to have been common-or-garden snakes like the one that shared our swimming pool a few days ago. In any case, Saint Crescentinus is supposedly the saint to call upon when you have a headache - perhaps because having your head chopped off is a sure cure! 

Next door to the church is a hostel staffed by volunteers who offer passing pilgrims refreshing drinks, breakfast, lunch or snacks depending on the time of day, as well as overnight accommodations for those wishing to stop. The two young ladies on duty cooked us a plate of spaghetti for lunch and then showed us around the church and adjoining tower before checking us into our room. The other pilgrims then continued on to Pietralunga, but Flavia and I are stopping here tonight as Flavia will be volunteering in the hostel in August and wanted to get a preview of how everything works! 

Città di Castello - Pieve a Saddi 22 km 

Via di San Francesco Day 10: Citerna - Città di Castello

Consider how a man walking approaches a little town; he sees it a long way off upon a hill; he sees its unity, he has time to think about it a great deal. Next it is hidden from him by a wood, or it is screened by a roll of land. He tops this and sees the little town again, now much nearer, and he thinks more particularly of its houses, of the way in which they stand, and of what has passed in them. The sky, especially if it has large white clouds in it and is for the rest sunlit and blue, makes something against which he can see the little town, and gives it life. Then he is at the outskirts, and he does not suddenly occupy it with a clamour or a rush, nor does he merely contemplate it, like a man from a window, unmoving. He enters in. He passes, healthily wearied, human doors and signs; he can note all the names of the people and the trade at which they work; he has time to see their faces. The square broadens before him, or the market-place, and so very naturally and rightly he comes to his inn, and he has fulfilled one of the great ends of man.

- H. Belloc, Walking

The path between Citerna and Città di Castello does not follow the road for cars down in the valley, but winds its way up and down, cutting across three ridges. Our accommodations at Le Burgne were on the top of the first if these ridges, so we began the morning by descending into a valley, where we passed through a farm where bufale are raised and mozzarella di bufala is made. Still stuffed from our abundant buffet breakfast at Le Burgne, we didn't stop to sample the cheese, but I had a taste later in the day when we were at our hostel with Franco, who had bought a few mozzarellas, and it was delicious! 

Bufale, Italian water buffalos, make the best mozzarella in the world!

We climbed to the top of the second ridge and then down again to the village of Lerchi, where we had to walk along the side of a busy road, fortunately only for a short stretch. Then we climbed the last hill of the day, at the top of which is the Eremo del Buon Riposo. Originally known as Santa Croce di Nuvole, the hermitage was renamed after Saint Francis spent a night there in 1213 and exclaimed "O, che buon riposo" - "Oh what a good rest I have had!" Private property of the same family since 1865, if I remember rightly, the hermitage currently belongs to a 94-year-old lady and is taken care of by a very friendly custodian, Andrea, who welcomes pilgrims with a cup of coffee and a tour. 

The hermitage is very small and it's hard to believe that during the war, 500 people, including the famous cyclist Gino Bartali, took shelter here, all under the care of a single friar; all but one survived until the end of the war. (One unfortunate soul was killed by a bomb, but only because he refused to take shelter in the crypt and stayed above ground during an air raid out of fear that his provisions would be stolen.)

We ourselves took shelter in the hermitage, not from bombs, or even pandemics, but from the thunder and rain that had finally caught up with us, after threatening but failing to deliver all day yesterday. By the time our tour was over the worst of the storm had passed, and we walked the final hour of the day's stage down the hill into Città di Castello under a gentle rain. With us were Piero and Maurizio, two pilgrims from Ascoli Piceno who told us there is a great walking route from Assisi to their home town. Franco, the pilgrim from Massa we met yesterday, also joined us at the hermitage, and is staying at the convent of Santa Cecilia like us, so we walked into the town together to search for our accommodations. 

After checking in, getting out of our raingear and enjoying a hot shower, we all went off to explore the town of Città di Castello before meeting for dinner. One of the poshest restaurants in town, called Le Logge because it is located under the loggia of a palazzo right in the main square, offers a delicious three-course dinner at a special price for pilgrims, only 17 euros including drinks and cover charge! 

The Civic Tower

The unusual circular bell tower of the Cathedral

Ristorante Le Logge

Carrot & potato gnocchi with cheese sauce and pepper

Citerna (Le Burgne) - Città di Castello 15.5 km