Kindness sprinkled everywhere

Consuma’s population is only 150 people. The town has many vacation villas and vacation homes.

Irene is the proprietor of the main bar, restaurant, bakery, and pizzeria in this tiny town. She was also our host for the night. When we reached the bakery we asked for her and she drove us to her home where she has adjacent property with rooms to rent for pilgrims.

She also goes looking for lost pilgrims. Directions for the Trek are not the greatest in this early part of the trek, as quite a few people start from La Verne (we will be there in couple of days).

We had a nice room by this orchard full of plums, pears, peaches.

Her place is almost a kilometer from town, so she picked us up for dinner and then also took us back to her restaurant for breakfast.

Breakfast was at 7:30 and there would be no food along the way so we had to have breakfast there, then start at 8.

We immediately entered a forest and within a km were lost! After another km or so we saw a husband and wife collecting blackberries. They assured us we were not too far off route and would eventually connect back to the trail. Half an hour later they saw us walking toward the next town to pick up the trail. The couple offered us a ride to that town. Our Angeles names happen to be Gabrielle and Sondra. They live in Florence and own a summer home in Consuma.

We were happy to be back on trail without losing too much time or adding too many extra km to our hike. Directions in our book were again very suspect, but the local white-and-red trail signs guided us. It was a beautiful walk through the climbing forest (we did climb about 1,500 feet) but we also had quite a bit of downhill too.

We found a nice spot to have our lunch at the crest of the mountain.

Of course after lunch some fruits were in order!

We met two German girls a few times during the day as we passed each other. Inga and Kristina have the “tracks” for the hike up to Assisi, which they gave me, so if I am able to load them on my iPhone. I hope we won’t have to worry about getting lost again!

The rest of the hike continued to be pleasant except that we are still getting used to the heat and humidity.

We met up with Inga and Kristina again toward the end of our day along with the German couple Diter and Brigitte while we were admiring the head waters of the Arno river.

We are now settled in the river town of Stia for the night.