A real time update (2) – Pentecost

Saturday 19/5/2018

My apologies for the delay in uploading the blog. It has not stopped, but several things have conspired against it in the past ten days or so. It is a rather laborious process involving a lot of transferring of photos and text between phone, camera and tablet.

‘Pentecost’ means fiftieth, and tomorrow, as I write, it will be the Solemnity of Pentecost. Pentecost comes fifty days after Easter. I started walking on Easter Sunday, so today marks seven weeks of walking and tomorrow is my 50th day on the road. In some ways it has flown by in other ways it feels like a lifetime! As I chatted with a virtual walking companion  the other day, who is about two weeks behind me, you find you simultaneously want it to go more slowly and go more quickly!

A few statistics:

I believe I have walked 1,125km which works out at 23km/day. That is a tiny bit less than I planned but I have had 4 non-walking days and if you remove these my walking average is exactly 25km per day, which is what I planned. I think the range is from 10km to 42km in a day.

I’ve slept in 45 different beds, and persuaded 44 different showers to issue warm water. On one night I had just a cold water tap.

I’ve met very few other pilgrims: A couple based in UK  I met in Canterbury on their way to Compostela. A couple from New Zealand. A group of thirteen French people. And four other women, from Holland, Ukraine, Canada and France. A total of 21, of whom 13 were a group. So the vast majority of days I have met no pilgrim. Obviously on the other hand I’ve met a lot of local people and I met friends in Lausanne and Geneva.

My French has improved enormously so much so that for the past few days, in a bilingual area, when I speak Italian people have said to me ‘Speak French!’ And I heard a women behind a bar the other day say to a man whom I was talking to in Italian ‘Speak to him in French. He speaks good French.’

So where am I? Two weeks ago today I walked across the border into Switzerland. Last Sunday I got to the ‘last habitation’ in Switzerland, a good bit after the ‘last shop’ in Switzerland, hoping to walk into Italy from there. But it snowed heavily that night, high now in the Alps. Monday I was snowed in, it was like Christmas! Tuesday I got close to the Great St Bernard Pass, which marks the border, walking, but had to turn back because of snow. So I got a lift through the Great St Bernard Tunnel which is barely 10km long. On the Swiss side, it was foggy with lots of snow and temperature just above freezing. On the Italian side – back to summer.

The Aosta region is bilingual. I left Aosta today, walking into Piemonte. That is the end of spoken French, so I need to resuscitate my Italian now.

I’ll be in Ivrea tomorrow, not far from where I am tonight. I hope to get to the cathedral for Pentecost Mass and then a rest day. And if all is well I’ll be able to work on the blog.

Items lost: one T shirt left drying in a bathroom in a hotel. One sunhat, deep in the snow somewhere in Switzerland.

I enjoy very much hearing from people. Some people are able to comment on the blog. I’m on Facebook and I think you can find me easily there. If you  want to follow every physical step, I’m on Strava with my own name. tim@walkingtim.com will reach me by email.

The picture at the top is a well  known window behind the high altar in St Peter’s in Rome. I hope to see it again soon.

Happy Pentecost.

Tim