Day 15 – Torchiarolo-Brindisi – 27km
I often think of beauty as something fragile, delicate, perpetually vulnerable to a destruction that would not only shatter the object itself, but the aesthetic quality along with it. And yet, nearly everything that is beautiful in and around Brindisi today has been trashed at some point. The bedraggled olive groves of past stages largely […]
Days 13 & 14 – Cannole-Torchiarolo – 69km
What defines us, what stands out as our greatest source of pride, can all too often bring about our fall. It’s a slow, leisurely morning as I set forth from Cannole, complete with two hard boiled eggs and a large bag of dried figs, courtesy of Fabio and Lucia. I pause in Carbieno to grab […]
Days 11 & 12 – Santa Maria di Leuca-Cannole – 81km
When I set out to walk across the USA, I had to rewire my brain and my feet. There’s a rhythm of life on pilgrimage, an utterly delightful one, that a trans-US walk can’t hope to replicate. The country is just too damn big. Admittedly, it wasn’t too dramatic a change on the East Coast, […]