Day 6 GEA Colla di Casaglia.

We did toy with idea of walking back up from San Benedetto in Alp back up to the GEA but if I'm honest we didn't toy with it for long. We don't have a map for this section and wanted to keep things as simple as possible. It did mean we missed the waterfall that makes San Benedetto in Alp famous. Instead we made an early start and a little bus back up to Passo del Muraglione and had a coffee in the bar there.

The passes are very popular with motorcyclists, I guess they like the endless hairpin bends on the way to top. Understanding his customers the barman in the bar at Passo del Muraglione has festooned the place with the autographed photographs of many heroes of Italian motorcycling.

In the bar a fungi hunter mistook me for one of his own, I'm clearly starting to blend in.

In the woods near Passo del Muraglione

Day 5 GEA San Benedetto in Alpe

Today was supposed to be an easy walk but somehow we managed to fill all the available daylight time, a sort of Parkinson's law adjusted to walking.

Time filling started with a relatively late breakfast at the Agriturismo Poderone and it was after nine when we left and only after Chris had nearly bear hugged the life out of a clearly petrified landlady.

Crushing the landlady at the Agriturismo Poderone

Day 4 GEA Campigna

Last night I finally had to admit defeat and accept that tomorrow's planned walk was too long. Because we are staying about five kilometres north of the route today the return trip tomorrow made the day impossible, probably over 11 hours. We have had to find another stop over tomorrow and push all the other bookings back a day. It's hard work if you don't speak Italian. Incidentally I don't speak a word of Italian but Chris somehow speaks less, he seems to think I'm some sort of linguist.

Early morning in Badia Prataglia

Day 2 GEA Chuisi la Verna

I'm starting to think that my schedule for the walk might be just a bit too ambitious. Instead of the anticipated but still fairly massive 8 hours 30 minutes, today was another 10 hour slog. True we did treat ourselves to a beer stop, and true we lost the route afterwards, wasting thirty minutes, but somehow we seem to be off the pace. The timings on the route only add to the confusion. There is one route but it has separate signs for the pilgrims on the St Francis Way and the sinners on the GEA. The pilgrims, with God on their side, are expected to go a lot faster.

Saints & Sinners

Day 3 GEA Badia Pratagalia

Apart from the fact that I seem to have lost, for the time being at least, the ability to publish yesterday's blog, everything went well today. Chris is definitely speeding up and we managed to get to Badia Pratagalia when we expected to.

We left Chiusi La Verna at about 8, a lovely morning but with a touch of autumn chill in the air. 40 minutes later we were up at the La Verna Sanctuary, a place where St Francis stopped for more than just the odd night. Because I had shorts on Chris insisted that I stay outside while he went inside to take a few pictures. The nuns were sparred my knees.

La Verna Sanctuary

GEA Day 1 Passo di Viamaggio

Good first day but a lot longer and tougher than I had anticipated and by the time we arrived at the hotel, at about 7.15, what little light there had been on a grey misty day had finally disappeared. I was knackered, Chris was shattered.

Another case of slightly dodgy planning. John Proud had left a comment on an early blog telling me that the buses don't run up from Sansepolcro to the start of the GEA on a Sunday but I didn't really check to see how long it would take to walk on the trail up to route. Well it takes about 4 hours, longer if, like us, you miss some of way marks. We didn't actually hit the GEA until 1.30 with the sign helpfully telling us we still had 5 hours 30 minutes to walk. Instead of the anticipated 7 hour trip we were walking for nearly 10.

Bad news - still 5 hours 45

GEA Day 0 Sansepolcro

Putting plans together in the middle of winter for all the walks you want to do over the next year (see the tab for my 2012 plan) is a nice way to fill in the short days but the schedule I produced was perhaps a bit on the heavy side. That was certainly how it felt at the end of the Via Alpina walk three weeks ago. I had hardly got home when I had to start getting ready for the next trip, a thirteen day walk along the Grande Escurscione Appenninica (GEA).

Last winter the GEA looked like a really good way to stretch out the summer and it looked different to anything I had done before. Although I've done a lot of walking in the Italian Alps I have never attempted anything further south and from an English perspective the GEA, with a Cicerone Guide by Gillian Price, is the best documented.

Compared to the Via Alpina, planning the walk has been hard work. I haven't been able been able to find any on-line resources or GPS help. The maps are poor and in the UK it was a real struggle to get hold of them. As far as I can tell there is no single source of mapping data in Italy and I've ended up with an incomplete set of maps from two different publishers. Booking accommodation has also been a hassle as several of the hotels are closed for the winter and of course the refuges are also mostly shut.


Still it looks like great walk and I've already seen some of the gorgeous hill top towns which make this part of Italy famous. The total route is nearly 400 kilometres and the plan is to see how far I can get in 13 days. Should easily do the southern part, which is lower, runs through forest and ends just before you get to Abetone, but I should also get three or four days on the higher, more spectacular ridge section which seems to characterise the northern part. The theory is that the weather should be OK, it doesn't get really wet here until
November and certainly at the moment the temperature is very pleasant.

If you have read my blogs before you will know that navigation is not always my strong point. Having a GPS trail isn't much use if you don't look at it and on this trip I don't have one. The good news is that I'm walking with my cousin Chris who is coming back for more punishment after a wet week with me in the Alps on last year's E4 trip. Chris is good with maps, although ominously, at the time of writing he has still to find his way to Sansepolcro.


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