San Quirico d’Orcia 17 miles

Quiet room until the birds started playing about on the roof. Luckily they waited for dawn which is about 7am here just now, and I was up at 6.45am anyway. Useless diy breakfast not helped by having one of those pod coffee machines. Leaving aside the ridiculous packaging I have become familiar with some of them now but not this one. Made a lot of noise but got nothing drinkable out of it. Nothing available outside so had to walk for an hour until I could have my cappuccino & chocolate croissant fix.

Chilly when leaving at 7.30am but was fine within the hour. Bit surprised that other pilgrims were dressed for the temperature when they set out rather than for the temperature it will soon become. Maybe I’m just too lazy to dig out my jumper from the bottom of my bag for the sake of half an hour of being slightly cold.

I’m fascinated by the use of poles by walkers. Lots of folk have them, often sticking out of their rucksack, or tucked under an arm, or over the shoulders as per this gent today. Even when being used “properly” they seem far more bother than their worth especially as so much of the walking in Italy is on road. I doubt if they would be useful for more than 5 minutes a day. Not a good enough payback for me.

I have a bit of an issue with some modern technology. My gripe is the clever folk don’t just invent something useful and leave it at that. No, they want to try and “improve” it by second guessing what you might want. So when playing music on my phone I can choose “shuffle” which you would think would take all your music and pick tracks at random. But no, it doesn’t do that, it tries to pick tracks that it thinks you might want. So certain tracks come up time and again and others never get played. Bloody nuisance. Defeats the object. Had to resort to ordering my music alphabetically and playing it in order. Not ideal.

Out to a restaurant tonight that advertised a “pilgrim’s” menu for 14€. When I checked when the restaurant opened I was told 7.30pm. Why, oh why, don’t they start before 7.30pm? Because by 7.35pm the place was pretty much rammed and everyone expected service straight away. There is clearly a strong demand for eating earlier and they would make life much easier for everyone if they let folk do it. Dinner wasn’t a great experience. Not helped by the waitress running about daft trying to serve everyone at once. Also I’m getting a bit tired of Italian food. Antipasti is really expensive for one. Fine if two of you are sharing. “First course” is just pasta or risotto. Tendency to overdose on the pasta/rice without much sauce or other bits. “Second course” is a dry lump of meat or fish with one accompaniment of potatoes or veg or salad. Nae sauce. Not great. Far too dry every time I have had it. No wonder I choose pizza. Seldom lets me down. But it does get samey.

Despite evidence to the contrary I do look over these footprints before posting and when looking at this one I seem a little grumpy. Sorry about that. Will try and put a happy face on tomorrow.Læs mere