SQd'O to Gallina - PM

Starting from the tower, we walked down through the village of Rocca d'Orcia, where St Catherine has her own street with maybe two houses, and out the old gateway with post-holes and hinge remnants from the 3rd C wall. We were on a white road that was mostly flat, but the sun came out, and there were not many trees. We are told the rolling, bare, brown-grey fields are typical of the valley of d'Orcia.

We stopped around 1:30 for lunch (Italian bread) at a table that a farmer had set up outside his house, then kept on going across the Tuscan Nullabor. After the frequent sights of the morning, the afternoon was a slow trudge through mostly ploughed fields. We were heading to a town called Gallina, but branched off about 800m away from it to our "hotel", Agriturismo Passalacqua, where we had a room (or set of rooms) in a farmhouse on a working farm.

We arrived around 3pm, and our bags were in a shed. Inauspicious, but then we were bowled over by the farm-owner's bubbly daughter (a restoration architect), who pointed out the features of the 64ha farm around the house, the vegetable garden, and the distant towns of interest (which did not include Gallina). One of her 7 cats seemed equally interested in the explanations until it tried to bite Anne, so we ended the tour and unpacked.

While Anne recovered, I walked into and back from Gallina, where there was nothing to see. It was supposedly 14 deg when I was back, but felt more like 4 deg, so we sat in our own little kitchen and caught up on emails and photos from the day, then looked at the sunset.

Dinner was at 7, with another couple as well: Kyle and Sophie, two Americans with whom we had already spent several hours talking on the way to Rocca d'Orcia. That was a welcome surprise, as they were very nice. Home grown pumpkin soup with croutons, pork sausages with potatoes and chard, cooked by the farmer's wife. It was the best meal so far by quite a way.

Tomorrow is a shorter day, so no need to hurry in the morning. We can spend more time finessing the odd, annoying blister. Notwithstanding all the ups and downs today, and cat attacks, we are otherwise doing well. Sore shins from hard roads, but that seems to be it.

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