Monday 24th May 2010.
“Where are you from?” Christian asked me as I punched my PIN number into the credit card machine the next morning and gritted my teeth hoping it wouldn’t spontaneously combust or burst into hysterical laughter. “
I found my way easily into the huge medieval Piazza del Campo. The place was alive with tourists and native Sienese sitting in the shade sipping drinks and people watching. As the sunlight played on old and young alike, strolling in the massive open space, licking ice creams and munching foccacia’s, I snapped many pictures, but try as I might, I just couldn’t get a well exposed photograph of the great bell tower that dominated the square. The sun was directly behind it and no matter my efforts I either ended up with a dreadfully over-exposed shot, or one that came in silhouette form, denying the tower of it’s wealth of beauty and fine artisan detail. Youngsters played and splashed water from the trickling spring, and mothers took photographs of their children looking in awe at the intricate statues adorning the fountains and water filled ponds of the plaza’s northern side. I bought myself a blueberry ice cream and struggled against the suns heat to finish it before it melted as I strolled lazily uphill through the tiny, shadowed lanes to the Piazza del Duomo where the Duomo di Siena, or Cathedral of Siena itself stood in emblazoned sunlit glory.
Sweet mesmeric music drifted to meet me as I climbed the stairs to enter the piazza. A violinist there moved with his music, feeling every note, living every sweet, sweet tone that wept from his strings in tortured ecstasy. I sat on the ground, resting my back against some great column and listened as he breathed in his strings and totally immersed himself in his rapturous passion. I called out ‘Bravo’ and tossed him some Sheckles, then I walked through to the nearby cathedral; a magnificent gleaming white structure filled with the tiniest of details and sculpted by the hand of pure craft. It was medieval Gothic, at least I thought so, but the statues and gargoyles that peered down from it’s highest of high points definitely understood contemporary slob. They laughed and ridiculed me and my efforts to capture there existence on camera, led to Ice cream running down my arm and splattering across my not so white T-shirt and onto my jeans and then my shoes. Did anyone notice that? I wondered as I attempted to clean myself up without being obvious. Of course they did. Children pointed me out to their parents, a Nun walked by and looked me in disdain, a photographer pointed his lens at me and said ‘Messy’; but did I care? no not really, for just like the age old stonework, the peeling paintwork and the rusted iron railings that filled so much of Siena, I was just another part of the scene; and besides, the alluring aroma of Pizza was calling me from not too far away, and my stomach was telling me to eat.
So I paid five euro’s and got a slice of pizza and a small can of coke. The coke was fine as far as coke goes, but the pizza was definitely a little bit dodgy, it really didn’t worry me though, I’d probably eaten worse before. Nor did it worry me as I sat at the side of the road eating it and drinking coke that the local Carbinieri pulled up alongside my bike and told me I couldn’t park it there and had ten minutes to be gone before they came back. I’d done
“I, for one, have an idea that he will never bring this journey off’. So read the words of Homers Odyssey; and I for one, have likewise thought the same. As I sat in the tent that night, flicking through the pages of a well-loved and much-read book, it occurred to me that tomorrow I’d actually be in Rome, I’d have reached the halfway point of my own odyssey, and that from there I’d be heading back towards the uk again. ‘What, I wonder will be the elixir I shall return home with? I have yet to seize the Golden fleece of my journey’. The almost-full moonlight dancing on the water reminded that the stage of completion was near. Any moment now, I would be entering into the great Ordeal where my resolve would be tested fully, and my reward bestowed upon me should I survive the unknown test. I finished writing for the night, and then walked to the campsites washroom where I could re-charge the laptop in one of the power points lining the wall there. As I stood there with nothing but the sound of insects buzzing in my ear, my stomach began to rumble, and an acid bile rose slowly into my throat.
Tuesday 25th May 2010 ‘See
I wish I could say that Rome was a the crowning glory of my adventure, that it was everything I hoped it would be, and that the journey to get there simply paled into insignificance when compared to the splendour that was Rome itself; but I cant. Maybe I could blame the rampaging microorganisms that curdled in my gut for my very downhearted opinion of
I’d bought a map as I entered the city, and had worked out roughly where I was and where I wanted to go. First up was the
So I sweated my way up the hell that led me into
A man was playing in the small waterspout there with his young son. He was chasing after him, and splashing water and making monster faces and sounds. The boy was giggling and laughing hysterically. After a minute or so the mans wife arrived with another two children, they were both girls aged about seven or eight, and dressed in pretty little dresses with their hair done in sparkly tinsel and ribbons. Immediately I thought about my girls in
I walked back to the fountain and refilled my bottle yet again. I took a long hard slug from it, put it back in my bag and braced myself for the road back. By the time I got to the bike I was near to bursting, I’d drank nearly three litres of water in the past hour or so and my bladder desperately needed emptying. Now I am not so gauche to urinate in public, but by that time, I’d decided
“So how did you manage to get out of there?” Stephen asked me over a hot cup of coffee and a cold German sausage. “Dogged determination” I told him. “That and playing the beast at its own game and going where I wanted to go, not where it sent me”. I’d forced my way through the traffic, I’d ridden straight through Red-lights, and I’d beeped and tooted and abused and kicked the scooters, cars and pedestrians that got in my way. Eventually I’d made my way onto the Auto route and just kept going as long as I could. By eight o’clock that night I was drained and in desperate need of some food and somewhere to lay my head down. I saw a sign for a campsite near the town of Civvitavechio, so turned off the Auto route and wound my way towards a large Pine forest where I found the camps entrance, set in a woodland clearing.
It was very quiet there, not a peaceful quiet mind you, but an eerie quiet. It was dark too, but not a nighttime dark, more a Stephen King type dark. The woman behind the desk spoke little English, and my Italian had never even got passed Go. I read the Tariffs board and worked out it’d cost me 18 euros for the night, more if I wanted electricity. Fine, I really didn’t care, I just wanted to eat something even though It’d probably make me sick, which wouldn’t be such a bad idea. I handed over my passport and credit card, but the credit card machine wouldn’t work, so I reluctantly handed over 20 Euros, and then had to ask her for the change. I asked where the restaurant was, she said it was closed. Okay, so what about the shop that’s advertised on the front board then? It was closed too she told me. ‘Is there anywhere I can get something to eat here, anything at all?” She shrugged her shoulders, out of either disinterest, or non-comprehension. Bloody hell, if I hadn’t felt so done-in I’d have turned around and ridden straight out of there again, but I was wasted, and really needed to sleep.
“And so here you are now, enjoying a hot drink and eating German sausages”. Stephen said as he pulled a map-case out of his pannier and made his way to the table where I was sitting.
The receptionists’ husband had come out and bid me follow him on my bike to where I should put my tent up. We wound our way past deserted caravans that looked like they’d not seen life for years. I followed him deeper and deeper into the woodland; past the deserted and derelict restaurant, and the boarded-up shop with it’s remnants of long-passed holidays still sitting on the rickety verandah, and its tattered curtains peering out at me through filthy broken windows. It got darker and gloomier the further we went. I thought that maybe I could be murdered here tonight, and my body be buried in a shallow grave and all my belongings sold on e-bay. The track swung left past a pile of freshly felled trees, then right, towards a large washroom complex. The driver stopped his car here and pointed from his window to a large patch of open grass surrounded by a wild-looking hedge. I waved my hand as he drove away, and turned the bike into an opening in the hedgerow and onto the grassy campsite where I saw a man boiling water on a camp stove beside his tent. Parked to one side was a motorbike as laden with luggage as my own. It was a BMW GS 1150, and belonged to a doctor from
“And yeah, for sure there were other sights I’d wanted to see” I told him after retelling my tale of horror in Rome, “but after the circus Vatican, I wasn’t about to have my vision of the colosseum blown apart too. I didn’t want all my bubbles burst at once”.
Stephen had arrived at the campsite an hour or so before I had, and had likewise felt uneasy about being there. He said that he had considered packing up and leaving but couldn’t face the prospect of having to find another place at night, and going through the whole breaking camp, and setting up routine all over again. When he’d heard my bike coming along the track though, he’d decided that things were possibly looking up, and had put some water on the boil for what he rightly considered my much-needed coffee. We sat at the table of a long deserted caravan and pored over maps of the