A Secular Pigrim: From Portico di Romagna to Dovadola 

People keep addressing me as a pilgrim which feels strangely comfortable, but my path is pantheistic. 

At the start of canto 2 of Inferno, Virgil tells Dante that it is Beatrice who has sent him to guide him on his journey. Dante is reassured. He responds by describing how,

‘As little flowers, which the chill of night
has bent and huddled, when the white sun strikes
grow straight and open fully on their stems,

so did I, too, with my exhausted force’

Like Dante, I set off this morning standing tall but with some weariness in my body. I had a 33-kilometre day ahead of me and my feet were still painful from being waterlogged for the last two days. My boots hadn’t dried out in the night as I’d hoped they might, and so to put them on was to submerge my feet into a damp abyss. 

I squelched my way out into the sun to set off at 9am. The golden orb had returned, at least momentarily. 

I couldn’t help but stop for a coffee in the café I had visited yesterday to salute Lisl. A man in an African shirt was sat on a tall stall reading the paper. It turned out he was from Burkino Faso and he appeared delighted when I spoke to him in French. Once again that thought crept into my mind, ‘I could live here.’ 

Lisl put added a powder to my coffee,

‘It’s ginseng,’ she explained, ‘it will make you more powerful.’

After getting lost and losing phone signal the day before yesterday, I made sure to text my mum and let her know where I was heading and my estimated arrival time. Nadia had sent me another lovely message saying that my blog was helping her to see and appreciate Dante through a new sociological lens.

‘It’s so much more interesting that the way we’re taught at school,’ she said. ‘You’re now like my academic Virgil!’

I wondered whether the fact sociology is less respected in Italy, as Alim had opined last night, was why there were so many Italian sociologists in the UK. The migration research centre where I work, IRiS, at the University of Birmingham, counts three.

It was 9.30am by the time I left the bar. A band of us had had another long discussion about the prospect of rain. In these parts, people seem to enjoy talking about rain as much as in England.

On this walk, I’m finding that it’s a constant challenge to manage my time between walking, writing and making memories with new people. But I’m determined to write every day. The writing feels as important as the walking.

As the critic Osip Mandelstam has observed, the rhythm of Dante’s prose – in the form he invented of terza rime – third line rhymes – reminds us of the footsteps of a walk. He writes,

‘Inferno, and even more so Purgatory, celebrate the human journey, the measure and rhythm of our steps, the foot and its form…Dante’s is a prosaic modality. He pictures the coming and goings of life drawing on multiform and captivating expressions. In Dante, philosophy and poetry are always on the move, always on their feet.’

I followed to Via dei caduti – the way of the fallen – up for about 5 kilometres before I stopped to see what is known as the world’s smallest volcano which has been active since before 1500. In reality, the perennial flame is due to the emanation of gaseous hydrocarbons which, in contact with oxygen, remain perpetually on. The flames that emerge from the subsoil, in the middle of an uncultivated field, create a particular sight that reminded me of Ulysses speaking to Dante from within the tongue of far – could this have inspired him?

I stayed a while to look at the body of a dead mole. Its hands were leathery with large talons stemming from them. Then I set back off.

Pink flowers had climbed through the centre of an abandoned traffic cone in the hedgerow and buttercups, cow parsley, and dandelions lined the verges of the road. I was glad to have a single path to follow so I couldn’t get lost. Here to my right were hexagonal, indigo flowers, and there, a mauve plant that looked a bit like lavender but without the smell.

Tractors were loading hay bales into a lorry and I passed more piles of wood and a fence weaved with sticks the way I’ve seen in Shining Cliff Woods near my house back home.

The sweat was dripping down my forehead, but I resisted the temptation to put my cap on for fear I would fate the sun to disappear. 

I passed by rosehip, the fruit of which we’d used at my primary school as a form of itching powder, and modesty, the seeds of which my brother and I used to shake out and use as money in pretend games of a summer. 

A black goat bleated from behind an electric fence and out of the margins there emerged a wild iris, a vivid purple in the sun. A happy bee buzzed past and a couple of butterflies tentatively made their way back out into the sunlight after the rain

It was a show and steady ascent with panoramic views of the town. Electric cables were strung across the landscape like fairy lights on a Christmas tree.

A single stone house with a terra-cotta roof was nuzzled into the bosom of the rolling hills. 

The path was covered in more broken tiles that would have made for spectacular mosaic pieces had I only had the space in my bag: there was a flower, some sunglasses, a pineapple, pink, purple, yellow and green – perhaps we could adopt this method to fill the ubiquitous potholes in England. The Department for Transport had recently said that the local authorities’ road maintenance pot would be boosted by £500m from mid-April, but councils must publish annual reports detailing progress on potholes or lose a quarter of that extra funding.

I heard the familiar rustle of lizards and a frog jumped into the stream to the right of the road. But would the weather hold?

I was making slow progress at about 4 kilometres an hour, unlike the cyclists who sped past me up the hill in their fifty shades of lycra. At one point the road was interrupted by a landslide, the asphalt shredded into black puzzle pieces. 

My bag was definitely heavier than the recommended weight of 10 pounds and I was reminded of the proud penitents who carry heavy rocks on their backs in Purgatorio. The weight forces them to walk slowly, their bodies bent low to the ground. Dante compares the suffering of the hunched souls to the human figures (with knees to their chest and pained expressions) used in architecture to support a ceiling or roof. 

‘Just as one sees at times—as corbel for
support of ceiling or of roof—a figure
with knees drawn up into its chest (and this

oppressiveness, unreal, gives rise to real
distress in him who watches it): such was
the state of those I saw when I looked hard.

They were indeed bent down—some less, some more—
according to the weights their backs now bore;
and even he whose aspect showed most patience,

in tears, appeared to say: “I can no more.

Hairpin turn after hairpin turn, I proceeded up with my stash of coffee and a cachet of teabags. I was carrying two litres of water, Alina’s socks, my blue eyeliner, a Pokémon card and one tile fragment – the one with the pineapple – that I just hadn’t been able to resist picking up.

On a wall there was graffitied ‘Viva la resistenza Palestinese‘ (long live the Palestine resistance).

Unlike previous days where I’d been totally alone, today I passed a few individuals. I oscillated between ‘ciao,’ ‘salve’ and ‘buongiorno’ and people returned a friendly reply. 

The village of Monte Busca announced itself by the sight of wheat and a display of orange flowers that did not appear wild. Here, potholes in the road had been filled with tarmac. A man sat outside a wood workshop eating a yoghurt next to a stack of abandoned crates. There were sweeping views on either side of the path.

Much thought has gone into this route so that, wherever possible, you are not walking on the road but it felt good to have my feet on solid ground. 

The expansive green lawns that cascaded down the slopes reminded me of the quads of Oxford colleges, although these always came with a sign, ‘do not step on the grass.’ Here I could tread as I pleased. I thought back to the Wadham summer ball. At 6 in the morning a group of us had staggered out onto the quad in a rare opportunity to laze there for a while, hung over and cuddling one another for the fun of it all.

The cloud started to hang heavy and I could smell the oncoming rain.

By midday, I’d done 10 kilmetres. Since it was a long day, I was rationing my water intake. Thirsty, I bit into an apple and ate a cheese sandwich. As Dante writes also in canto 10 of Purgatorio, 

‘I was exhausted; with the two of us
uncertain of our way, we halted on
a plateau lonelier than desert paths.’

Except now I was alone, walking with just the familiar sound of the cuckoo. It sounded like a child’s first notes on the recorder.

My guidebook was still a little damp, though it had spent all night on the radiator.

I snapped a nail heaving my bag back onto my shoulders. I hadn’t brought a nailfile and, though I’d gifted one to my twelve-year-old niece for her birthday, I didn’t have a Swiss army knife of my own.

With my bag I was now also carrying a spider as a stowaway. 

I disturbed a dandelion, sending the seeds into a little cloud.

The path went from asphalt to gravel to concrete to woodland. It was hard to walk past an agriturismo without stopping but I had to keep moving forwards. I stopped briefly to change my sodden socks for dry ones, a piece of advice my friend Craig from the local pub, Angel’s, had given me before I set off. My feet felt like they were on fire, bringing to mind the popes who are buried in holes by Dante with their feet in flames. 

‘Out from the mouth of each hole there emerged
a sinner’s feet and so much of his legs
up to the thigh; the rest remained within.

Both soles of every sinner were on fire;
their joints were writhing with such violence,
they would have severed withes and ropes of grass.

As flame on oily things will only stir
along the outer surface, so there, too,
that fire made its way from heels to toes.’

Inferno 19 is the first full-fledged indictment of the Church in the Divine Comedy, picking up on some earlier indications that Dante associates the clerical establishment with the sin of avarice. He, like me, was not a fan of organized religion, or at least as it existed in its contemporary form.

I sat for a while and observed some baby donkeys. They had soft hair on their heads, fluffy like little chicks. I thought about the similarity of their hooves and my nail that had just snapped off and of how all things in nature are connected.

The two calves hung close to their mother nuzzling her neck. One of them had a large penis that hung down. The other didn’t. One bit its mother’s mane playfully, and the mother nibbled the back knee of the lighter of the two which was coloured like ash.

Mud stuck to their fur which was wavy, and their ears looked soft to the touch. They were pointing forward. Did that mean that they were happy or scared?

I was reminded of a quote from Alice Walker’s novel, The Colour Purple, 

‘Whenever you trying to pray, and man plop himself on the other end of it, tell him to git lost, say Shug. Conjure up the flowers, wind, water, a big rock…The more I wonder, the more I love.’

Tiny flies buzzed around puddles on the muddy woodland path which I tried to avoid in order to keep my feet some semblance of dry.

Suddenly it became humid and I felt a twinge in my right buttock. I was tired from the uneven path and would be happy to get back on the road. Prickled by pines on the descent, I put one foot in front of the other on the narrow path like a tightrope walker. I got my foot caught in a bramble and nearly went tumbling

I ate some almond cake and chocolate and worried that I hadn’t factored enough rest days to the return.

At 2 o’clock the first rain came. I was counting the kilometers religiously on my phone, grateful for my solar powered phone charger. A beetle climbed onto my shoe. It was iridescent, despite the lack of sun.

Curious ants had burrowed minuscule holes in the ground and a yellow and black butterfly soared past me, the first I’ve seen of its kind. White and brown ones abound. 

To the right, solar panels spilled over the landscape reflecting the light like strips of unraveled cassette tape. 

I saw cows in a field which always reminded me of my dad and the game Spot It that we would play in the car as children. You had a series of cards with things to see on the road: a tractor, a yellow car, a phone box etc. Once my dad had taken a 2 kilometre detour via a fire station so that he could trump us with his fire engine card. 

At 4 o’clock, the mist started to descend, and the top of the hills were obscured

Haybales had been tucked up in tarpaulin and an abandoned piece of farming equipment was slowly rusting outside an old farmhouse.

The cloud hung in heavy curtains, a blind folding down over the undulating hills.

An bathtub containing water was propped up on the marsh by two pieces of wood. Daisies stretched out on their storks which were the length of a ruler.  

I turned the corner and there it was, the village of Dovadola, with its winding path that would take me to shelter. The stark cliff faces were a mark of the ancient river that had forged the valley. Once again, the rocks were caged in to avoid landslides. As my earth sciences major mother had taught me, geology is the language of the land. 

I heard the familiar sound of the church bell strike 5pm and felt a pang of hunger. I’d always liked the sound of church bells just like in Morocco and Syria I had so enjoyed the call to prayer. 

Wisteria was hanging down from fences like bunches of grapes. The scent was something akin to the tiny round violet sweets that I would eat as a child. A three-wheel vehicle passed me. It was an emerald green. 

I passed the FC Dovalda football ground and an older church in town with a medieval tower. Someone stopped to asked me if I was doing the cammino of Assisi but I explained that I was a secular pilgrim doing the Dante cammino. I was a pantheist and following nature as my guide.

I went into the to bar the Antica Osteria and had a delicious spinach and ricotta crecione. This regional plate is a folded piadina in the shape of a half-moon. It looks like one big piece of ravioli, or rather, a raviolo. 

I was self-conscious that I smelt but the atmosphere in the joint was intoxicating. An older lady sat in the corner peeling plastic labels off a new set of plates. A little girl called Lucia was dressed as Snow White and sat terrorizing a black cat. 

‘It’s from the Befana!’ she shrieked, alluding to the old witch who brings sweets on the epiphany according to Italian folklore.

Another group of kids hung about in a gaggle around the ice cream freezer. Outside the adults were smoking. One of them had a beautiful wolf-like dog called Deni. After spending the day walking alone it was nice to be in company and I stayed and talked awhile.

I brought some cheese, tomatoes, dates, a big apple, pistachio nuts and some much-needed hair conditioner from a local store and continued with the next 50 minutes down the busy road to my agriturismo. 

I passed the sign to Loch Ness fishing zone and a petrol station. In Italy they put in the petrol for you, so you don’t even have to exit your car for a fill up. 

I already missed being up in the hills with the wildflowers. I thought back again of Oxford and how I’d religiously learnt all their names in translation. We had had to learn an insane amount of very specific vocabulary in French and Italian. I still have a cushion my friend Caroline sewed for me with the opening phrase from our French translation exam,

‘You are the most wonderful hippogriff.’ 

Now I’ve been here a week, I’ve started thinking in Italian.

The final leg involved another steep ascent along a winding road. I tried to channel the spirt of Virgil as my guide. As Dante writes when he finally reaches the slopes of Mount Purgatory, leaving Hell behind: 

‘The climb had sapped my last strength when I cried:
“Sweet Father, turn to me: unless you pause
I shall be left here on the mountainside!”

He pointed to a ledge a little ahead
that wound around the whole face of the slope.
“Pull yourself that much higher, my son,” he said.

His words so spurred me that I forced myself
to push on after him on hands and knees
until at last my feet were on that shelf.’

Thus I arrived in the Airbnb, Naturaliterre BnB – Microfattoria, a sweaty mess.

I was greeted by Benjamin, a kind French host who ordered me a pizza and put my boots by the fire. I checked my email to see that I had received a beautiful note from Anna in Montemignaio. There is so much love on this cammino. I feel held by the path itself. 

Another email to my work account reminded me to finish a funding application this week and for once I felt inspired and up to it. I’d been holding myself back because of confidence, but if I could do this hike, I could do anything.