Via Francigena 2017

In the Duomo in Fidenza

I don’t know who this is but I’m sure our classically educated commenters do.

No, not Charlie, an even older man.We saw him coming along the trail moving very slowly on two canes. He wanted to chat. He asked us how old we thought he was, Wynette told the social lie and said 85 even though he was clearly older than that. He said 94. He was a postman when we worked. He rode a bicycle for 20 km every day delivering the mail. We have seen 3-4 postmen on bicycles so far.

He said he had been retired for 40 years. I seem to remember reading that many people retire at 55 in Italy, or used to. This is one of their economic problems. Not that I am casting any stones since I retired just after I turned 53.

We asked if we could take his picture but he did not want us to, so no photo for this post.

It is so much fun talking to the locals. More kudos to Wynette for being able to pull this off. She says she only gets 25% of what they say but that seems to be enough.

Coming into Orio Litta

The last 2 km into town was an elevated path snaking through farm fields, basically a berm. I wondered what it was for. Pierluigi mentioned that when the monks came the farming was hard because the two rivers, the mighty Po and a tributary flooded the fields most years. So they built these giant berms to hold back the flood waters from the fields.

We had just crossed into Lodi, some level of political unit, and the VF signage suddenly got much better, including Camino-like pillars (photos later). Not piled with stones like the ones on the Camino so we started the tradition by carrying stones for a while for people we love and putting them on the little pillars.

Orio Litta

Our first three nights we were in B&Bs but there are none in Orio Litta so we are staying in a parrochia, a church-run pilgrim hostel. Our room is a lovely place at the top of this tower which we were told dates from the middle ages and was once a dairy farm and cheese factory run by Benedictine monks. (No sign of cows or monks now. Quite a nice remodel.)

A downside is that we have to go down two flights of stairs and then walk another 100 feet to get to the bathroom, but the view is great. (We’ll post photos tomorrow.)

One other pilgrim is staying here tonight so we met our first pilgrim. He is Italian and showed us his blisters which is a traditional pilgrim greeting.

We called and when we got here a nice woman showed us around and said Enrico, who we had called, was coming.

Then Enrico came, checked us in, and was very helpful and gave us some background and told us where to get dinner. We chatted with him for 15 minutes. Enrico has walked the Spanish Camino eight times. once from Seville (southern Spain) and just about every variation.

Wynette has been wonderful with her Italian. It is basic but essential, almost no one speaks any English.

A few hours later Pierluigi came by to chat with us. He is the mayor of Orio Litta and is quite a booster, very friendly, and spoke reasonable English. He said they had had 900 pilgrims stay at this parrocchia in 2016 and it is increasing by 100 a year. Tiny by Camino de Santiago standards (about 250,000 total pilgrims a year into Santiago) but growing.

Pierluigi said he has photos of most of the pilgrims who stay here. He took Charlie’s photo (Wynette was just getting out of the shower and had a towel around her head). He insisted that Charlie wear his floppy hat for the photo, even though we were upstairs in our room at the time.

Other Pilgrims

No photo because we haven’t seen any other pilgrims on the trail. It is just us and locals. We are early in the season and the VF has probably less than 1% of the pilgrims you see on the Camino de Santiago.

Also there does not seem to be much awareness of the VF among the local people. We did get one “buon camino” but usually it is buon giorno (good day). Everyone is quite friendly and helpful but no one asks if we are pilgrims.

We are clearly in a part of Italy that doesn’t get many tourists.