Via Francigena:San Gimignano to Strove

Tuesday, 10 April. Distance 21.5km

It was this day which made us realise we had been a tad optimistic about how far we could walk in a day with full packs - and by ensuring we went straight to sleep temporarily put paid to this blog. At 21.5k (c. 13 miles), it nearly did us in, making our projected 27k day later on look unachievable or at the least un-fun (more on this later).
After a slow breakfast at the Camping, we didn't get underway till shortly before 11am, on a fine morning but still pleasantly cool. It was a day of up-hill, down-dale, with a few fiume, imbotroni and other water features to cross, most on very-well-established stepping stone fords. We spent most of the day on unmade roads.
We soon started to pass collections of outbuildings apparently assembled from random mixtures of natural and unnatural materials (wood, corrugated iron, branches, sacking, plastic) which I initially assumed were dependencies of local poderi, but which we came by their ubiquity to realise were the rural holdings of people. Interestingly - even shockingly, particularly to Tim - they leave dogs "kenneled" in quite small runs - I think mostly hunting dogs. The dogs, unsurprisingly perhaps with relatively little human contact and nothing to do, set up a fierce barking whenever they sighted or winded us. We must have passed a dozen of these on this day alone. We hope they were fed and watered.
More happily, we met an old, lame shepherd, and his much more energetic dogs, driving a herd of goats down towards new pasture near a stream. We were taking a well-earned lunch break under a tree shortly beyond where the Via Francigena crossed the main road SW of Campiglia dei Foci, when the goats flew by, belling away, followed at a considerable distance by the shepherd.
It's still rather unclear to me how with energetic dogs doing their own thing, and him so far behind, he ever got them to go where he wanted, but with some zigs and zags, they were certainly all moving along. Perhaps the goats were doing most of the work.
We had some good-willed conversation, but our Italian was extremely stilted, and the old gentleman was missing some if not all of his teeth.
After lunch, the walking became hard - not because of the paths or landscapes, but seemingly the packs became heavier, our steps slower. We passed the Abbey of Santa Maria Assunta at Coneo, where we were accosted by two slightly sinister black-clad monks who seemed to wish we were German. I felt slightly guilty to be on the Via Francigena, and yet to bypass this ancient seat of pilgrim hospitality, but we were slow and it was late.
Our slowness increased after Gracciano dell'Elsa, where having descended past some impressive ruins of a huge mill (see photo) - a highlight of this day, as earlier we had passed an enormous "pig mill", the purpose of whose buildings and strange rusting equipment we tried to guess in passing - we took up our third significant "up-and-over" of the day.
By this time, it was getting late, and even Tim's cheery enthusiasm, manifested in chatter and singing, was waning. Seated on the bank of the mill leat, a restorative jam sandwich for him, and a Coke for Katherine and I, gave us the energy for the attempt, and we emerged at about 6pm into a slightly ghostly wood - ghostly because of the light quality which had become very flat, with the advent of gray clouds, and because of the remains of unknown buildings.
We emerged from the woods into a high plain streaked with white chalk roads, and knowing that Strove was now only a couple of km, we limped on under the threat of rain. Strove turned out to be a small Tuscan hill-town - dare I say typical, in that it turns the backs of its buildings to the outside world, but inside has piazze and crooked streets a-plenty - but we were not in a great state to notice its virtues, but quickly made our way to our destination, the Albergo Casalta which we reached shortly after 7pm.
This is a would-be classy joint, whose hostess perhaps looked a little askance at three weary muddy walkers - or at least two, for - as we've found throughout Italy (warning, as you could probably tell some serious generalisations coming) - a love of children among the Italians, coupled with Tim's charm and his few words of Italian, raised the temperature of the welcome a few degrees. The classiness did not extend to the room - ours at least - but certainly did extend to the dinner, which while a little pretentious was certainly of high quality, if slow enough that poor old Tim had to be carted off to bed after the primo piatto (delicious!) of home-made ravioli in a cream and basil sauce. So he missed both the secondo piatto of amazing Florentine beef and the dolce of (for me) chocolate mousse served with an excellent, sharp fruit jelly.
Then Katherine and I too fell into sleep, and woke not at all till our alarms shortly before 8am.