Lucca 15 miles

Leisurely start as a short day. Woken by thunder and lightning during the night but it had all cleared away by morning leaving some cloud. Lovely temperature.

Had a fair bit of road walking today which gave me more chance to study the Italian driver. Compared to the UK there seems to be a much higher proportion of them who just want to drive quickly. All the time. If there are 2 cars driving along you can bet the one behind is tail-gating and will overtake as soon as there is half a chance. Quite happy to do that in a built up area. I stopped briefly in a park in a small village with a primary school the other side of the road connected to the park by a pedestrian crossing. Didn’t stop folk overtaking right on the crossing I noticed. I’ve never seen so much overtaking in built up areas before. Yesterday the traffic was briefly stopped as a lorry was reversing across the carriageway. 4 or 5 cars were stationary. The next car decided to overtake them all and pull in between the first car and the lorry. This wasn’t some peak capped ned in a souped up Astra, no, this was an old bufty looking not unlike myself. The other odd thing was no one blew their horn or made any sign of disapproval. In the UK there would have been bloodshed at the very least.

In the interests of speed they want to take the racing line at corners. All very well but if there happens to be a wee chubby pilgrim coming the other way as the car comes round a blind corner then we both get quite a fright. There may be just no way I can get off the road so they need to rather quickly take avoiding action. Going back to the Russian roulette it has been ok so far but it doesn’t feel the safest activity.

Had some grapes today. Why has the continent not cottoned on to seedless grapes? Is it only the UK that has noticed that seeds are annoying? Won’t buy them again.

Staying in Lucca tonight. Like arriving on a different planet. Tourists everywhere. A huge proportion being Americans. Not sure what they come here for but come here they sure do. But they don’t seem to be staying in this pilgrim’s hostel thank goodness. Bunks for 10 but only 4 folk. Strangely someone appears to have brought their own camp bed. A stonking aluminium frame effort (see photo). Now when they were packing their rucksack, making sure it was as light as possible, only taking essentials, how on earth did a camp bed get included? Unfortunately it appears to be young Italian couple so my chances of making polite enquiries seems limited.

Managed to get a meal at 6pm for once. It did mean I was stuck with a tourist place in the middle of Piazza Angiteatro and you don’t get more touristy than that here. And it was a pizza again but being able to eat my fill for 8.50€ is awfully tempting.

Managed to get back to the hostel and get this written before lights out is a major plus. No sign of the others yet so I will get to bed first. Almost certainly will get up last so the etiquette should be they have to crawl about in semi-darkness going to bed and then again in the morning. We shall see. And I get 10 or 11 hours in my kip. Can’t be bad.Read more