We decided to take a day off from riding on the bus to see another incredible mountain town by walking over the hill behind La Romita, further into the mountains and to the barely-now-a-village of San Liberatore. From there, we could see another walk to the larger mountain-top town of Collestatte. What we did not realize at the time is that the entire wooded basin between San Liberatore and Collestate is the national park that Cascata della Marmore is part of. And if we'd walked to Collestatte, as we considered, we would be halfway around a large circle; if we continued from Collestatte, it would be down past Marmore, into Terni, and back up our hill. I now wish we'd continued our walk. I'm sure we could have found a way back to La Romita from Collestatte and we'd have had the pleasure of discovery on foot, coffee in a plaza, followed by a local meal.
The mitigating factor, though, becomes tired feet—rocky terrain (cobbles) and lots of hills take a toll. We never seem to hike hard toward a goal, so there's a lot of drift and more distance, but also more time afoot. We'd been walking cobbled hills for nearly three weeks. Miles per day? Probably averaging between 4 and 5. We took two days in Paris to hang out, do chores, and read, but we also went out for groceries and bread. We had some 7 mile days, including one where we also knocked off 68 stories in our hill climbs.
We didn't take the advice we were given by a local at breakfast, so we wandered around a bit before getting back on track. We were walking on pavement. There are no shoulders to walk on, but traffic is light and not scary. We were put back on our course by a kind man our age returning home from shopping. He drove us to San Liberatore and waved goodbye. We scared some of the neighbors by suddenly appearing on their quiet street behind the shuttered church. We found no cafe or bar, clearly long gone. We could see Collestatte in the distance and the lure of coffee was just not quite enough. We sat in the small park overlooking the layers of valleys and sketched, photographed. We hiked back down to La Romita. It was a quiet, pleasurable day in the country.
