Thursday 12 April. Distance 7.6k
Everything had dried out successfully overnight, and we headed hungrily for breakfast, which was in a marquee in the garden. Despite the sun it was chilly, and the gas heater was welcome. We packed rather slowly and unwillingly, and motivated ourselves for what we knew would at least be a short-ish day.
In bright sunshine (see picture) we set off, heading back down the hill to the main road, where we fell in for a while with some Francigenisti from Cremona. These were the first other way-walkers we had seen, and were very fit older folk, also heading for Siena that day.
Eventually we left the asphalted road, heading through woods for a landmark called La Piramide, where we had no idea what to expect, but which turned out to be an obelisk (see picture, not ours) celebrating the draining of the unhealthy local marshes.
I had vague memories of quite large portions of central Italy having been affected by malaria, and understandably therefore they undertook significant works to get rid of the marshes whose miasmal air they blamed for malaria. One of these is "il canale del Granduca", which begins just under la Piramide, a 2km long canal, drilled through a hill, which took the marsh waters away to a different watershed (see plan). Recently restored (and hydrologically tested!), you can I think walk through the whole, and Timmy and I explored the first 500m or so with our torches (pictures to come) - felt very adventurous, with the weight of rock pressing overhead and slippery underfoot.
You can if you have some Italian read more about the history of the canal at http://www.ladianasiena.it/luoghi.php?target=canale
On, then, from the canal, to a small unmade road, which seemed for unknown reason to warrant a bus service. Although we were pretty knackered, Moray had set the totally arbitrary goal of getting past the Siena ring road before succumbing to the bus. So we crossed from sublime crete Senesi to less sublime Sienese suburban concrete, where we waited for a bus to take us into the centre, and were relieved that no one asked us for a ticket or to validate our non-existent tickets.
We were staying at a lovely small hotel in the centre of Siena - really a large apartment on the 4th floor - where the hosts were kind and the beds comfortable, rested up for a couple of hours, and then Tim and Moray went to profit from the luxuries of the city, viz. delicious icecream, which the gelaterie stack in huge piles, each studded with representatives of its flavour. These we ate in il Campo, which must be about my favourite public space in Europe, because of the not-quite-uniformity of its northern edge, and because its vast size (must be 4 times the size of Trafalgar Square) means it never feels crowded. Tim chased the pigeons till he couldn't run any further, Katherine joined us, and we decided - with some protests from the peanut gallery - to take in the civic museum on the Campo.
Once in, though, Timmy was pretty into the Renaissance battle frescos, pointing out the means of death of every knight and foot-soldier in the victory of Siena over Frederick, and from there we kept him going with imaginary prizes for saint-spotting.
Then to find some dinner.Tim's cry was for pizza, and we were nothing loth as the Tuscan restaurant diet otherwise is rather meat-heavy, so we headed for Il Pomodorino, a pizzeria recommended by Italian TripAdvisor. Located near Santa Caterina (see picture), it turned out to have a totally stunning view of the main part of the city and il Duomo.
More importantly for Timmy it had great pizza, and a heater that was masquerading as a flamethrower. A good (and good value) meal, and a lovely walk back through the orange-lit streets, with another antiquity at every street corner.
Having decided to abandon the idea of a 16-mile day the next day given our tiredness and the dodgy weather forecast, and devote the morning to sightseeing, it was easy to set the alarm late and drift off to sleep.
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