Thursday 2 August 2007

Pilgrimage from Pisa to Ardenza 31/07/07

Well, what goes up must come down and my attitude has plummeted like a rock :) I have lost all motivation to do anything. I don’t feel like being sociable, I don’t feel like drinking or eating, and I definitely don’t feel like walking!

Once again when my alarm went off this morning I just turned it off and went back to sleep. I didn’t feel like moving anywhere.

My attitude over the last few days has been pretty crap and now my bodies decided to join in the fun. When I stopped last night my heels were a bit sore but they seemed to get worse through the night. Every time I rolled over they would wake me up in pain. They weren’t any better when I finally got up to leave so it was a painful first few kilometers.

It didn’t help that the transvestites were out in force as well. Normally I find their over the top exuberance amusing but today it was all a bit much. Every time they tried to talk to me I got a headache :(

Over the last few weeks I have been finding it easy to walk for 10kms without taking a rest but lately I have been lucky to make 4-5kms. It seems that as soon as I start walking all I think about is stopping again.

I managed to stagger the 20kms to Livorno and spotting a laundry on the way in I decided to do some washing. It was token operated and there was no one around to help so after inserting €20 it asked if I wanted 6 tokens (4 too many). I pushed the “no” button but to no avail. I then rang the number on the machine but the woman didn’t speak any English. I figured if I wait the machine would give up and spit my money back out….it didn’t :( I gave up first and got the 6 tokens…

I was feeling pretty pissed off by this stage and put my clothes on and went for a feed. This cheered me up a bit and I realized that rather than being pissed off, I now had the chance to repay a bit of the generosity that I had been receiving over the last few weeks. So I went back to the laundry and gave away my extra four tokens. I think having a good meal helped as well, but this left me feeling much better :)

After going to the internet I thought I could make another 10kms before dark. I didn’t count on taking a wrong turn, so I only made five, but oh well…

I have also noticed that Tuscany has a lot of rubbish! It is really surprising but along all the roads and in a lot of parks there is rubbish everywhere.

I found a really nice spot by the river and set up to watch the sunset. I also had one last job to do before bed, which was to pop the big blister that had appeared on my little toe. It wasn’t pretty :)

3 comments:

Kiwi Nomad said...

Sounds like you need a few good meals of pasta pasta and pasta to get you going again. All the best for getting through this rough patch.

Ben :) said...

Yes...

That was my theory exactly, eat my way out of it :)

Kiwi Nomad said...

It's all this adventurous camping near the track that impresses me! As a mumble-mumble-aged female I would be waaay too scared to do that. But I am impressed reading about someone else doing it!
Glad you are back into enjoying it. And I agree, the campsite prices are almost unbelievable!