Pilgrimage from Montalto Di Castro to Civitavecchia 07/08/07

As I was sleeping in another paddock it was once again an early alarm. But this time it looks like I had been found out…

As soon as I started moving around inside my tent this great yapping started up. It sounded a bit far away but I thought I better check just in case. Sure enough, about 50m away, four little “yap yap” dogs were giving it their best. Luckily none of them were game to get any closer but it wasn’t long before it got the attention of the farmer.

I gave him a wave and I figure the fact I was up and about at 6am worked in my favor because he just waved back and went back to work.

It was a boring 20km walk to along the highway to Tarquinia but I made good time. I wanted to get my laundry done, find an internet café, and then walk at least another 10kms.

Unfortunately, Tarquinia is situated on a big hill and once I was at the top I found out the Laundromat was back down the bottom…the laundry could wait so it straight to the internet.

I haven’t had much luck with internet over the last few days and today wasn’t any different. I only got half the things I wanted to do finished before I was informed that the shop was closing for lunch. So as many of you would have seen, I have had half a post up for the last couple of days :( sorry…

I did find out however that the next big town, Civitavecchia, was only 20kms away. So rather than wait for the internet to reopen, I decided to leg down there.

It was a hard slog…I have banned myself from Sprite and I think my body was protesting. And not only that, I hadn’t had a coffee today either so it was a double blow :)

Five kilometers out I decided that if I found a caravan park I would stop, but it wasn’t to be…I finally crawled into town around 20:00 and went to see if I could find a parish. After an hour searching I was still out of luck, so it was looking like another night in the tent. The worst thing was that I would have to walk out of town, which meant that I wouldn’t get internet or laundry done in the morning :(

I thought my luck had changed when I spotted a one star Albergue near the edge of town…but even they wanted €50 for the night!!! Italy isn’t the place to be in August if you want a cheap holiday. Even though saying that, I don’t think I really could be spending any less on accommodation ;) So I suppose the exorbitant prices do have their bonuses, even if it is just forcing me to camp :)

Civitavecchia had a funny feel to it so I wanted to find a good hiding place for camping. Unfortunately my legs were too tired to take me very far so I settled on this dodgy bit of a construction site. At least if I was gone before it got light it would be unlikely that anyone would see me.