Singin’ In The Rain

Day 39: Walking through the Val d’Orcia from San Quirico d’Orcia to Castiglione d’Orcia, 11.5 km. with rain for the first half. By far, one of the most beautiful stretches in Tuscany.

What a day it was….reward after reward. It started off raining. But…we only had 10 km to go today so we thought, what the heck, let’s just do it. It looked like most of it was was on secondary gravel or paved roads so we weren’t as worried about mud. We had our “el cheapo” umbrellas from a previous rain storm up and they worked just great. Here are a few pics from the start…

We climbed up to Vignoni Alto and saw some interesting sights…as we walked along its narrow street…(You’ll have to zoom in..)

Turned a corner and received our first reward….a small chapel, the Romanesque church of San Biagio. We were a bit wet and so decided to go inside. It’s the most beautiful chapel I’ve visited on this trip so far…..music sounding like a Gregorian chant and such a feeling of peace, serenity, ….I can’t describe it any better. It actually brought me to tears. Here is a video…

…and a few pics…

Through the arch and more spectacular scenery. Around about this time it stopped raining as hard and we were able to walk without umbrellas for a while.

It was during this stretch, that we began to suspect we were heading towards that “Castle in the Mist.”

Before that, we descended into Bagni Vinoni and its “piazza d’acqua” (water square).

We stopped for a coffee, 2nd reward, before starting the climb, because, sure enough, that’s where we were going to be spending the night. Closer and closer we got, climbing steadily, until….

….we reached our B&B…3rd reward…

…and the final reward was lunch…

Followed by a snooze….

The castle at night from our B&B…another reward.