Velletri - Cori, 5th of November

To day I left the BnB and went to the local bar for the second B which consisted of a coffee and a croissant. On the other hand I only paid 20 Euro for a whole appartment and this breakfast so I won't complain. At 9 O'clock a woman named Lucia, being responsible for this stage of the Via Francigena, came to drive me past a landslide that had destroyed a bridge. It saved me an hour of walking along the trafficked roads so I was grateful for the lift and even got some home made biscuits and a hug from her. She stopped the car at a path which was not on the trail and explained how I should get back on track. The surrounding nature was stunningly beautiful with a lake on my left and hillsides with trees in autumn colours and acres of land waiting to be sown in on my right. The birds still singing somehow I managed to take a wrong turn somewhere and I ended up in this 5 'm deep ravine which went on for several hundreds of meters and it became more and more difficult to get out of it because of the steep muddy sides overgrown with thorn bushes, mini landslides and what not. To my surprise I stumbled upon 2 large stray dogs. I was rather relieved that they shied away when they saw me. In the end I saw a possibility to get out of this, but not with the heavy pack on my back. Luckily I keep a piece of rope just for this instance to hoist the pack out of the ravine after I had climbed up the side. I was glad to have overcome this obstacle and that the dogs left me alone, but the result was that my clothes, shoes and back pack ended up full of sticky mud. Anyway the remainder of the trip was rather uneventful and although rain threatened all day it didn't. From here on the path went uphill with breathtaking views over hills with olive groves and vineyards and the flatlands towards the West. At 300 'm and higher I could even spot the sea with the island Ponza far away. Now that I am again basically walking on my own all day with nobody to talk to feelings come and go and I am more prone to think about and of the people that are close to me and that I love. Guess I have reached that 2nd stage I have talked about earlier when I walked to Santiago de Compostella. Anyway they are good feelings.

Cori is an old Roman town located on a 400 'm high hilltop with narrow winding and sloping streets with houses three stories high. It even hosts an old Greek/Roman temple dedicated to the god of Hercules dating back to 200 BC still standing quite untouched by time on the edge of a precipice. I stay at a BnB called Minerva Domus on the top of the town with a magnificent view of the surroundings from my bedroom window. Mother Laura and daughter Camilla welcomed me heartily with a cup of tea. They washed my clothes, hung them out to dry and fed me with toasted bread and delicious olive oil from their own plantation. All in all a great day. Tomorrow onwards to Sermonata.