Day 5: Ponticelli to Poggio San Lorenzo via San Moiano (15 miles)

Up, down, and around; lost, lost, lost and found! 

Wandering the hills of Lazio province sans GPS is like visiting the Paris Catacombs without a guide. We leave our lovely host Giuseppi at 7:30 hoping that our downloaded maps will serve. Wrong! They don’t. Not even the six wild boar hunters in the back hills can easily explain how to get to our midday stop, Poggio San Moiano. Then there is that pesky we-don’t-speak-Italian issue. We finally arrive (unwounded!) at this medieval hamlet perched high in the mountains. We snack in the town square, enjoy a well earned cafelatte, watch a Middle School field trip pass us by, and buy lunch provisions before moving on to the beautiful Romanesque Church of San Martino.

Cammino signs become more common but face the wrong way (pilgrims traditionally walk to Rome from Rieti, not vice versa.) We get lost at least four times in the afternoon, and an already long day becomes even longer. We meet three German pilgrims at 2:00 who are heading to Ponticelli, where we left this morning. We compare Cammino notes, and theirs worry us a bit since they left at 11:30 and still have 6 hours of twisting unmarked trails await them. And then there are always the infamous boar hunters who spared us this morning but who by evening may decide that going home with a pilgrim is better than returning empty handed.

We picnic at St. Vittorio, another Romanesque gem on the opposite knoll with Roman ruins built into the walls, definitely farther away than it looked from the opposite ridge. Revived by a lunch, we set off again with determination, much of which evaporates after a series of wrong turns. Poggio St. Lorenzo finally welcomes two very weary Americans during evening cocktail hour. A sweet high school student leads us on his moped to our Agritourismo B&B. Deo gracias–a 10-hour walk without being run over by a car or a herd of errant sheep, forced to sleep in the woods, or terminated by boar hunters. The miracles of the Way of St. Francis are present.

We are the only guests in the beautiful country hotel, Agrituristico Santa Giusta; apparently two other guests didn’t show up and we don’t ask why. A delicious dinner and early bed are tonight’s program–no Internet connection to mess up our biorhythms. Let see if it’s true that the pains of a day’s walk on the Cammino melt away after a good night sleep (and some medication). 9/25/2015