Day 50: Stage 40: Massa, 31 km, Sun, 25°

Gelato In Massa! 💪🏻💪🏻🍦

After a very long stage I have experienced a few tennical glitches with my blog, but now I think I have things in line and I can get on with writing.

My friend was up 45 minutes before the agreed time this morning, and I have absolutely no idea why😂 We had to wait until 7:30 AM to get into our amazing pastry bar for breakfast. It was worth the wait! When having an Italian breakfast before a long stage I’m forced to order two pastries, which I now know how to do without pointing. A big advancement! Sometimes I’m not sure if we are improving Costanza’s English or my Italian. A little of both I suspect, but we mostly converse in English.

The stage today was book ended by two climbs. The first climb was just a short steep hike to the fort above the city.

The fortress is quite beautiful, although we didn’t visit it because honestly who wants to climb up here twice? It wasn’t open when we came by this morning. 



Following our wake up climb we descended quickly and found ourselves following a canal for quite a ways.



We found several gatherings of farm animals and I dutifully videoed them to send off to Saoirse later in the day. Apparently no matter what I send her, she keeps asking for horses! Thankfully I still have a few videos of horses that I haven’t sent, keeping them in reserve for just those moments.

She did get a video of these donkeys and miniature ponies, and I’m waiting to find out how that went over.

We continued on down the canal, eventually leaving it and walking on pavement after that for much of the day.

Loads of good size fish in the canal, quite a surprise!

Passing through town along the way we came up behind these cute little kids with their mom heading for the local school. It made me think ahead to when our grandchildren will head off hand in hand with their parents on this daily ritual. Clearly having grandchildren is affecting my outlook, blog wise!

We joined up with another canal, or maybe it was the same canal in a different place? One never quite knows some days. 

Always a peaceful place to walk. 

The mountains were always just off to our left. These are the back sides of the alps that we saw when crossing the Apennine Mountains a few days ago. In a moment you’ll see something quite startling happening to them.

One of the big highlights along the stage is a visit to the Roman ruins at Luni. We arrived there after about 13 km to discover that most of the site was closed after the area was recently hit by cyclonic wind storms that made a large part of a site unsafe to walk through. We walked on disappointed, but eventually found the amphitheatre which was undamaged, and open.



After the Roman sites in Aosta, these were the first I’d seen. I think I’ve been expecting to find more of this type of history, but I suspect that the closer I get to Rome the more there will be.

As I said earlier, there’s some seriously difficult things happening in the Tuscan Alps. The mining of the huge marble deposits is causing significant damage. These are the famous marble works of Carrara. 

I watched s documentary not long ago which showed them splitting and cutting the marble. The tough part was the newer crushing, pulverizing and bagging the marble dust for shipment. As I understand it, it’s causing quite an environmental problem, all the cut partials are washed into the watershed impacting habitat and fisheries in a significant way. My walking friend was quite upset about it, and we discussed the situation at length, and again at dinner.

I couldn’t help thinking of all those marble kitchen countertops. I’m not making a judgement here, it just became part of a larger discussion. From a personal perspective I actually found this quite interesting, thinking about how the mines have been worked for thousands of years.



We had to wait to cross! 

Then we climbed and the day really became quite wonderful! At the top of the climb we walked for over 6 km along hillside hugging narrow roads. Pure heaven!

Definitely in my happy place!

As a matter of fact this tag kind of said it all today.

Where would you like to be now?

And then we began working our way down towards town.



And then we had to climb up into town! But of course we did!

Entering the old town gate.

The past several days I start talking about gelato before the end of the stage. It’s beginning to become a little bit of a standard procedure. Walk all day in the sun, enter said town and figure out where the gelato stand is. On the walk today we decide to call this blog post Gelato In Massa said with considerable feeling and Italian inflection!!

This sample was absolutely the best gelato so far! Pistachio on the bottom and the most amazing chocolate on the top! Trust me, to die for! Oh, and this was lunch today. No regrets!😂😂

I am waiting for Costanza to get back here from a bus trip to the coast to see the Med. She just texted me, then called to tell me that she was having trouble finding a bus back. However, she now has a bus and is heading back to the hotel and we will go out and find some dinner when she gets here in about 20 minutes. Given the technical difficulties I had today that should give me enough time to get this wrapped up and posted.

It looks like another interesting walk tomorrow, 28 km. I’ve since adjusted the distance to 33 km because the accommodation I sorted out is further along than I remembered. I’ll have to do a little reading, but it looks like we go through a really beautiful town. I’m looking forward to that, though there have been so many beautiful towns. I’ll leave you with this remarkable beauty. It’s there if we look for it.