Look, in my head, it’s a logical enough decision. Let’s start with that.
One of the things I’ve learned over the course of these last few mega-walks is that it’s not the long, individual stages that wear me out, so much as the relentless parade of moderate-to-long days. In other words, I’d rather alternate 25 and 50km days than walk 37km every day. For the time being, I’m past the point of suffering physically on walks; I’ve had practically no pain on this journey across Italy, and I rarely even wake up sore. No pilgrim shuffle at day’s end, either. Turns out, when you walk daily for six out of ten months, you get pretty good at it.
No, the reason I try to alternate stages is to provide myself with a mental break. Wrapping up a walk at 1 or 2pm, as opposed to 4 or 5pm, makes an oversized difference in the quality of my day. Sometimes, though, the ideal gets trounced by reality, and the longer days pile up. And besides, the rules shift a bit by the time the tenth straight week of walking comes around. A short day wouldn’t cut it. I needed an off day.
So I walked 63km to Bologna. By combining the last two stages heading into the city, I could buy myself a breather, and here’s where the Dave Logic comes in: as worn down as I was, it was easier to pull a 63km stage than to walk the two moderate stages, because I can manufacture the motivation to hoof a stupidly long day in an instant. This was a fun challenge, the kind of thing I would remember, somehow including another 2000+ meters of up-and-down, despite an absence of legitimate peaks. Instead, the Cammino seemed to chase down every last Apennine ripple. The first was the most difficult, pushing almost straight up the hillside, with no pretense of a more formalized trail. With the ground coated in dew, I spent as much time fighting for solid footing as I did ascending.
A considerable reward awaited me up top, though, as the trail proceeded along a ridge, with fields unfolding to my right, while steep cliffs fell off to the left. An overcast morning took a little luster from those views, but I couldn’t complain–this was perfect walking weather, and I could feel the kms clicking past in quick succession.
Staring at the map the night before, looking for potential shortcuts, my eyes were drawn to the next stretch, where the Cammino veers far to the east before doubling back to the west. It would be easy to chop off a couple kilometers right there. However, that detour exists for good reason–the town of Dozza sits at the far eastern point, and Luciano in Brisighella had insisted that I make the time for it. And rightly so.
While Dozza dates to the 9th century, that’s almost irrelevant. It’s hardly a distinguishing feature in Italy; in many places, that would make it a relative new-kid-on-the-block. The large castle is admittedly a nice touch, but that might not move the needle either. No, Dozza’s status today, as the cool, off the beaten track destination for people in the know (and pilgrims on the Cammino) dates to 1960, when its leadership launched the Biennial of the Painted Wall competition, in which artists converged upon the town from all over the world to create an open-air art gallery, painting murals on the town walls. The broader context for this innovation was linked to the 1960s “Economic Miracle” in Italy, which triggered a movement in artistic circles to make art more inclusive, breaking free from the traditional gallery model to something more public, immediate, and accessible. While prizes were central to the competition early on, they were eliminated in the 1970s, to center the creative process. That sounds good, of course, but I suspect it also saved the town some cash.
Dozza is a delight to visit but a disaster on a day when quick movement is required. Fortunately, it’s not a big place–it’s basically a two-block town, both shooting eastward from the castle. I made a complete loop, intended to head right back out, and then got sucked into a café that offered roasted potato and rosemary on whole wheat focaccia. I’m only human.
The easiest ascent of the day followed, and I was flying, powered in equal measures by creativity and caffeine. And just like that, I was dropping into a narrow valley, looping through hillside vineyards and a pair of fishing ponds, en route to San Martino in Pedriolo. Already, the walk was a third of the way over–a fact to be celebrated with another coffee. While admittedly a little indulgent, this was also my last chance–no other towns of any size stood between Bologna and me.
The most sustained climb came next, nearly topping out at 500m, as it looped around Monte Calderaro, before slaloming between Monte Castellaro and Poggio Lei. The Cammino dropped back down 300m almost immediately, before swinging right back uphill for another 200m. The trail was deeply eroded in places, a canyon worn down to craggy rocks between the narrowest of footpaths on either side, and as my feet gripped snugly to the tacky surface, I breathed a sigh of relief that I hadn’t encountered this during the worst of the rain.
The village of Settefonti stood atop the next rise, best known for the church ruins sitting on the grass-covered hill. Destroyed in World War II, the church’s bell tower and façade were subsequently rebuilt, restoring the outline of the structure that had marked this hilltop for centuries, even if only crumbling foundations remain behind that two-dimensional reminder. I followed a dirt track through a steep descent, passing the single-owner village of Ciagnano. Have you seen those articles about Italian villages being sold for a euro? This was one of them.
The trail turned northward through the next valley, joining a riverside track. My first attempt at crossing the river was thwarted by the destruction caused by the 2023 floods, and that immediately placed me back on high alert. Fortunately, a bridge survived 500m downstream, so a little highway walking got me back on track–and kept my feet dry.
Three ascents remained, all of the 100-150m variety. The first was the muddiest of the day, but also the least steep, so no harm done. The second followed a popular biking trail, trees and bushes encroaching across both sides, but most of the bikers had already wrapped up their day by this point in the afternoon, so I had it to myself. The third, meanwhile… it was practically as steep as the one I started the day with, and my pace certainly flagged as I crossed the halfway point. Not too long after, a little kid went running past me, powering through all the way to the top. Awesome kid. I hated him.
By this point, I was officially in the Bologna zone, with locals out on day hikes or enjoying the quiet countryside. And then, the city appeared before me, much bigger than I had imagined, and yet emerging in near-complete form almost out of nowhere. That uptick in foot traffic had done a number on the saturated trails; the final descent in the city proved to be the muckiest of all my walking thus far. My poor shoes, so close to retirement, were fully coated by the time I crossed the city limits.
Alas, that didn’t mean the walk had reached its endpoint; on the contrary, I still had another 8km to go. While this was urban walking, relatively speaking it wasn’t so bad. The route generally wove through parks and green spaces, including the magnificent Piazzale Maria Jacchia, which was filled with townsfolk on this sunny holiday. As I carried on into the center, arriving eventually at the Piazza Maggiore, the story remained the same–thousands upon thousands of Bolognese having a great time.
The walk was all but over. I had one errand to run, snagging a new pair of shoes from an Amazon Locker, and then picking up food so that I wouldn’t have to leave the hostel that night. I felt great. The walk went better than I could have hoped; my body responded perfectly. The collective mood of the city reflected my own.
It was about that time I learned the pope died.
A month earlier, I had been on Pope-Watch, grappling with what seemed like his inevitable, forthcoming demise. In the weeks since, though, it seemed like he had rebounded, like he wouldn’t just outlast my trip, but also that he would persist through this year of Jubilee that he had launched, the Jubilee of Hope. On Easter, I saw the same footage as everyone else, of this seemingly rejuvenated pontiff connecting with the faithful. Not resurrected, sure, but not too far off that. To the extent, then, that the death of an old man who recently endured serious illness can be viewed as shocking, this qualified.
Two days later, following a fabulous day-trip to Ravenna, Bologna seemed to still be unaffected by the death. The footage from Rome is gripping and evocative. Up north, though, the visible displays of mourning are more difficult to find. That’s certainly not to say that they don’t exist; they’re just proving to be less accessible and immediate to me, as I go about my day as a foreigner and a tourist. Bologna itself has such a significant international presence, filled as it is with schools, that it’s difficult to pin down just how many Italians are present in any cross-section of people. I’ve heard more English in the past couple days than I have over the course of most of this trip.
The longest walk of the trip was followed by the shortest–from 63km to 14km. I can’t sleep in, no matter how hard I try, but I spent 90 minutes at the breakfast table, working through two large mugs of coffee, followed by a mug of tea. Then I sat in bed for another hour. What a delight. At 10am, I had yet another coffee, sitting down with an Italian guidebook author for a conversation, before I finally hit the road. My last stop in Bologna centered on its defining sight, the Two Towers. Bologna is famous for its towers, 24 of which survive, but these two–the Asinelli and Garisenda Towers–are spotlighted on all the city tourist materials.
There’s a fun story at the center of these towers. The story goes that the two families–their names are the ones attached to the towers–were rivals, and that these towers were built out of a competitive spirit, to demonstrate their wealth to all in the city. Alas, the historical evidence calls such a tidy narrative into question.
The news gets even worse for these towers, though. Both, like people, have lost height over the years. The Asinelli must have lost at least 20m over the years, some of that due to deliberate remodeling and some of it as a consequence of repeated lightning strikes and fires. The Garisenda, already much shorter, lost 12m very soon after its construction, because its foundation began to subside.
Oh, and also: they’re both leaning. Indeed, the Asinelli is the tallest leaning tower in Italy. They’ve both been closed to the public since 2023, due to concerns that the Garisenda, in particular, is leaning too much for its own good (its 4-degree slant outpaces Pisa’s 3.9-degree, it should be noted). Or, to put it in technical terms, scientists “detected an anomalous increase in the tower’s oscillation.”
The shortest walk of the trip was also the flattest, with a grand total of 12m of ascent across those 14km. And frankly, I don’t remember a single one of those meters. The Cammino crossed the Bologna train station and then followed a canal path all the way to Castel Maggiore. Near the end, I made a short detour to snag a half-hour of wifi at a McDonald’s and to visit a supermarket. That was the excitement for the day. Otherwise, I settled quite happily into the pilgrim accommodation, Casa Giovanni, offered by the local parish. Happiness is a kettle and a mug. In other words, the day finished as it began.
These two days can’t exist without the other. As I think about it now, there’s a parallel to be drawn with those two towers of Bologna. Very different sizes. Both flawed, unable to stand on their own merits, but best valued in combination. The long day is the one I’ll remember; the short one is what allows me to lock those memories down, imprinting them upon paper. Switch the order and I’d risk being bored on the short day and stretched thin on the long one, but arranged this way they feel like the best allocation of every minute.
