Slow Travel

Slow Travel

 
Stepping back in time, Liz Light walks for a week in Italy’s Lake District.
 
I trace our path over folds of the map and fret; the altitude lines between Lakes Orta and Maggiore are close together and I note a town called Alpino. There is, it seems, a mountain range to walk over. I wonder if I’m up to it, if my knees will last the distance, and what about blisters? There are daily walking schedules of around 15 kilometres and as I sit on my bottom at my computer all day I am not mountain-fit. 
 
Romans walked these paths 2,000 years ago, and shepherds have followed their goats and cows over these mountains forever. If bootless Romans can march for months I can walk for a week; it’s just a matter of putting one foot in front of the other!
 
In the morning my anxiety has gone. Lake Orta is silver and the ancient monastery on its tiny island looks picture-pretty in a medieval way. We turn our back to it and head for hills with tops cloaked in cloud.  
 
Kath, my friend and the chief navigator, carefully reads the Inntravel walk notes and we soon leave the road on to a forest path. The vegetation is late-spring lush and the forest-filtered light is awash with green. I can almost hear the trees growing. I quickly learn to avoid nettles with leaves stretching to stroke our legs. Ouch! The old tale about juice from dock leaves easing nettle stings is true.
 
The path, originally for horses and carts, curls gently upwards leading to  Maisino, a village of cobbled lanes, stone houses, some with a plaster-finish painted with frescos - vines, flowers, stylised lions – and a piazza. We sit and ogle at the buildings around the square. The houses, both modest and grand, are 300-years-old, but are still homes for ordinary folk.
 
We follow skinny lanes uphill, around a corner and grin at the pinch-me-I-might-be-dreaming 1566 church of San Rocco. The façade is decorated with statues of saints plus one of Jesus, so high up that only god can see it clearly. In the adjoining bell tower a cluster of bells are waiting to strike the hour, and steep steps lead to the solid wood door. The interior walls are intensely decorated with religious artwork, much of it as old as the church. In our antipodean world this is only found in history books.
 
A lane behind the church leads to an open valley with small farms, where cows are knee deep in grass. Their low-toned bells dong gently as they move. Hamlets of five or six houses hunker into the hillsides. Some have magnificent vegetable gardens with fat cabbages, jack-in-the-beanstalk beans, spinach, tomatoes, aubergine and tall scraggly artichokes. We pass roses rambling over fences, hedges of pungently sweet jasmine and flowers – tiger lilies, petunias, geraniums – bright with summer.
Liz Light
lizlight.co.nz