From: Mirandola
To: Nogara
Miles: 22
Total: 969
Today’s walk was pretty basic; though it was long and on a busy road most of the day.
We left the hotel in Mirandola at 8:30 after a good breakfast. The morning was crisp with clear skies and light winds. The forecast said it would get more wind after lunch; more on that in a minute. Because we got started a little earlier than usual, there were a lot of cars on the road, probably headed into town for work. Also, the truck traffic was heavy all day.
The area of Italy we have been walking through for the last couple of days is all farm land. It reminds me very much of the area of Texas around Lubbock. Very flat with miles and miles of crops. After walking a few miles along a two lane highway, our route took us down some dirt roads through farmer’s fields. We even saw an occasional dairy. Of course, with the farm operations everywhere, you also get that lovely natural smell of manure. Brings back old memories.
By lunchtime we were about 11 miles into our 22 mile day and ready for a break. We were lucky enough to be in a small town that had a cafe so we sat for about 30 minutes and had a sandwich. Shortly after our lunch break, the winds started blowing really hard. The forecast was 10-20 mph from the north. They were more like 40 mph from the west. That made it a crosswind for us. At times it was very hard to walk a straight line. And since we were walking through cultivated farmland, there was rarely any tree cover to break the wind. Also, there was some blowing dirt from the fields. Luckily, as we got closer to our destination of Nogara, the wind started to die down a little.
So we’re now at our last hotel before we finish Part 1 of this adventure. Tomorrow will be a long day. First, we walk 19 miles to Verona. That marks the end of this part of our trek. We walk straight to the Verona train station and take a two hour train ride to Milan Central train station. At Milan Central we transfer to an express train to the Milan airport. From there, we take a shuttle bus to our hotel near the airport. Wednesday, Dave and I both have flights leaving around 9:30 AM to take us home for 90 days. We’ll meet back at the Verona train station on 11 June to start walking again. Hopefully this will all come together tomorrow and we’ll get home on time Wednesday night.
So basically another successful day of walking. One note of interest; this afternoon we could clearly see the Italian Alps off to our north. We’ll get even closer tomorrow but will not start our climb through the mountains until we return in June.