DAY 127 – SIENA TO PONTE D’ARBIA

It was a shock when our 0645 alarm went off. For some time during the night there had been a lot of noise from the restaurant below. Then in the early hours the street cleaners started up. Oh dear!

After a quick breakfast we were on our way by 0810, aware that we had an appointment for a phone interview with BBC Radio Wiltshire at 083o our time. Leaving our lodgings, we crossed the Piazza del Campo and then turned south on the Via Roma.

Leaving Siena by the Porta Romana

We couldn’t help but notice a rather grand looking entrance to the Ospedale Psichiatrico as we passed by. It looked as though the facilities are housed in a huge old villa in the style of our old psychiatric hospitals. Overhead was the unmistakeable sound of a balloon being fired up in short bursts as it floated across the clear blue sky above us – another sign of spring.

We reached the Porta Romana at around the appointed time, found ourselves somewhere to sit with reasonable phone signal and waited for the appointed call. Julie took it and gave an informed and we hope interesting interview about our experiences and the relevance of it all to her time at the Salisbury District Hospital.

On the way we met a Canadian-Korean lady who is walking the Via Francigena alone from Lucca to Rome. We made our excuses while we did the interview, but met up with her again some time later.

Remarkably for a large city we found that we were through the suburbs fairly quickly and into semi-rural country dotted with well-to-do looking houses on largish plots. Being Sunday, there were a fair number of people out walking, jogging and cycling and clearly this was an attractive place to be doing so. As we left the suburbs behind us a hare shot across our path.

Once past the SS223 motorway, here in a tunnel, we found ourselves once again in proper countryside: rolling hills mostly given over to growing wheat.

Acres and acres of wheat looking like green velvet in the sunshine

Behind us Siena stood prominent on the skyline, most of its sprawling suburbs out of sight on the northern side of the city.

Through a large recycling centre with piles of compost and heaps of old cars, and across a roundabout, and then a trudge through an out of town light industrial area, car showrooms etc. More road walking brought us into Isola d’Arbia, a rather sad looking place which lost its early 14th century church to a planned motorway and gained concrete piers to carry the motorway, but then the motorway was never built. A small shrine is all that remains of the community’s historic church, and decaying concrete piers marooned in fields are all that is left of the planned motorway.

However, the cafe/bar was open and we were ready for a mid-morning cake and coffee. Here we caught up with the Canadian-Korean pilgrim again, and sat outside with her and several well-oiled locals who were smoking like chimneys, putting back the wine and chewing the cud. As we walked on, we passed a lot of newly built apartment blocks, but trains no longer stop here and there seemed little in the way of employment.

For most of the rest of the day our route followed tracks through rolling farmland, busy with Sunday walkers and cyclists out enjoying the spring sunshine, touching on the edges of somnolent villages. There was little in the way of wildlife in this prairie farming landscape, except for larks singing joyfully overhead or plunging down to their nests hidden in the emerging crops.

Walking through an extensive area of large allotment gardens

As we’ve seen elsewhere in Italy, there are often extensive allotment gardens on the edges of villages and towns, providing an escape for flat dwellers as well as a source of fresh vegetables for the family. Many plots seemed to have quite substantial structures on them, and some of those looked like they are lived in at least some of the time.

For the last 5kms of the day we followed a track alongside an unfenced single track railway line, making for easy, if not very interesting, walking. Even on a Sunday there was a 2-carriage train in each direction during the couple of hours it took us to walk this stretch.

We arrived in Ponte d’Arbia just before 5pm and were hailed by our hostess as we started heading off in the wrong direction to find our digs for the night. It was very kind of her to seek us out and save the addition unnecessary walking at that stage of a long day. Chantal had very good English, putting us to shame for our lack of anything more than the most basic of Italian.

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4 Comments

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  1. It was about 0740-45 your time, possibly slightly later. Not sure which programme we were slotted into….No worries! J&T

  2. They do but I still can’t find you 🙁 Maybe they broadcast it a day or so later – but I don’t have the same dedication to a cause as you and can’t listen to that much Radio Wiltshire!
    Would love to join you in Rome but unfortunately other commitments mean it’s not possible. Look forward to seeing you when you’re back though.

  3. Hi Noeline, yes it was a live broadcast, we believe, but maybe BBC Radio Wiltshire programmes don’t go onto i-player? Thanks for your loyalty! How about meeting us in Rome? We hope to arrive on 27 March and stay for the week. It would be great to spend some time together. Julie and Tom

  4. I dug into BBC iplayer to listen to your piece but haven’t been able to find it 🙁
    Was it broadcast live?