I am writing this in a place called Camaiore which is between Massa and Lucca. Below is our account to Massa but I just wanted to add something before posting this as I was not able to post the blog last night and we have enjoyed another day’s walking.

When we were last in Camaiore in 2017 we stayed in a pilgrim place outside the town. We tried contacting it again for this trip but there has been no response so we are in a one bedroomed apartment in the main street. The historic centre is really lovely, with a very narrow road lined with all sorts of little shops, bars and restaurants. We stopped at a similar place for lunch today, too. It’s called Pietrasanta and is a very stylish place with an awful lot of art works distributed throughout the town. We loved it when we passed through last time and were entranced by all of the statues again this time. It is a place that attracts many sculptors and artists and just before we passed through it had hosted a book festival, too, which looked really interesting.

Massa is at the heart of the marble industry here (this is the Carrera and Massa local authority area and, as you walk from Massa to Pietrasanta, you can see the mountains by Carrera that have been ripped open to extract marble since at least Roman times. You also pass so many places storing, cutting and fashioning marble, too. There is a café in the square at Pietrasanta that dates back to the 15^th century and is reputed to be the place where Michaelangelo stayed when he was there negotiating for the marble he wanted to use on the façade of the church of San Lorenzo in Florence.

Along the way today we kept bumping into and chatting with a French couple from Nantes, a French man we met yesterday (who has walked from Le Mans) and a young German woman pilgrim that we have not met before. Everyone was in good spirits and the morning rain held off giving us a good walk through the hills where we were able to look down and survey the coastal plain stretching from the edge of the Ligurian coast all the way down to Viaregio. Despite the mists we could see the Mediterranean and also the mountains that loomed up behind us and stretched north and south. The wooded hills here are etched with lines and great patches of vineyards and olive groves and there are still fine mountain-top villages to spot with their brightly coloured houses and tall towered churches. You can hear their bells ringing out the hours and playing merry peels at odd times of the day.

It was not until we were on our final stretch in to Camaiore that the rain began to fall in earnest in great big drops that pounded our ponchos and danced around our feet. At one point, the drops were joined by flurries of hailstones, just to add a bit of excitement and, of course, this all took place as we were walking along a very exposed path right along the side of a deep trench where a river usually flows. The small stream occupying the bottom was hardly visible through the pounding rain. We were not surprised when the rain died away just as we entered the enclosed safety and shelter of the town.

Tomorrow we arrive in Lucca – a wonderful small city of real character and one of the places we thought might be our last stop on this pilgrimage. Thankfully, we have some days left and expect to get as far as Siena as my other blog entry, below, talks about……

Here is what I wrote yesterday –

Today (Sunday the 9^th October) we are in Massa.

This is significant to both of us because we are staying in the same hotel we stayed in when we last walked here in 2017. Last time we joined the Francigena at Sarzana then walked here. So, from today our route begins to mirror our 2017 route to Rome. It is no longer simply the Francigena for us, but the Home to Rome route of 2017, too.

It is also when we start to really get to grips with how far we will be able to go this time. We can certainly walk to Siena in the time we have left and so we are deciding whether we can walk any further. We will look at the time left, the route beyond Siena and work out what is practical for us. We both know that we want to return slowly and have booked our Eurostar journey for the evening of our last day (24^th October). Before arriving home we want to have had a period of decompression….

And, the truth is, we are more than a bit shocked at the idea of actually stopping and the concept of our pilgrimage journey ending so soon.

We met a lovely English pilgrim today. A man called David from Harrogate who was arriving at the bar we were just vacating (after enjoying coffee and a shared focaccia and ham sandwich) We said hello in Italian and wished him a good journey and he replied partly in Italian and English, and I said, in English, that the bar was good and he jumped back exclaiming, “You’re English!” which I didn’t deny as Alison said yes.

He told us we were the first people from the UK he had met since he started walking (from Bourg St Pierre – on the way up to the Col St Bernard)  and we had to admit that he was the first UK pilgrim we had met, too, since Calais.

We had one of those great pilgrim exchanges and he gave us the link to his website (www.davidstott.weebly.com) and we went on our way as he set off into the bar.

It wasn’t until later that we really got to grips with the concept that we had been walking all this time and had met a few people from the US, Australia and New Zealand, a Korean and several Europeans but he was our first English person. It was as we were talking about the end of the walk that the shivers set in. He had been (as some others have been) quite excited at the idea of us having walked from our home and that we had been on the road for so long. We always accept people’s enthusiasm with a mixture of pleasure and increasing worry as we see the end looming up.

All of this was made more immediate when I look at the text I was writing a couple of days ago. I was reflecting on the fact that it is probably difficult to really express just how wonderful it is to get up each day and head off to a new place, discovering the route as we walk it, meeting people as we go and ending in a new, different town.

In my blog I often describe what we have been doing and share the difficulties and absurdities we encounter. I also talk about what we have been thinking about and discussing but, underlying everything, and quietly bubbling along with each day, no matter how hard it has been, is this feeling that we are so lucky and so excited to be doing this thing.

We stop from time to time to actually say how lucky we are as we look across a wooded valley at a series of jagged mountains rising out of a vast pool of white mist, or as we climb up and along a rugged forest track and we find ourselves being urged onwards by the vibrant song of so many different small birds. We have shared so much and each day we set of we can only hold our breath and see what the new day has to offer.

So, just as we know that the reward for climbing up a series of broken paths to the top of a hill or mountain will be the view, and the liberating feeling that we have reached this peak, we know that each day we complete gives us similar satisfaction and reminds us that we will have a fresh start in the morning.

And all of that just makes the idea of ending our pilgrimage all the harder to face.

Hence the idea of a few days of decompression – just as a deep sea diver has to take time to re-adjust to a different type of atmosphere, we will need a few days to come back home.

Now that I have managed to get that off my chest, let me tell you that the route from Pontremoli to Aulla and then on to Sarzana was both pretty demanding at times but utterly stunning, too. Lots of steep climbs and descents, often on demanding and very rough or unstable paths, but they were all do-able and enjoyable. Concentrating for long periods on exactly where to put each step can be more exhausting than the actual physical part, so we rested well and took an easier afternoon route today, to Massa to keep us fresh enough for tomorrow’s hill climbs.

The photos I want to share include the effects from the mist and the sun and are a couple of the reasons why we will always look forward to returning to this wonderful land.

(I have also added a few from today….)