Stage 19b and 20a: Medesano to Bardone. Brooms and bales. (Part 2)

Down steeply and then an arduous graft along the uphill snaking of an open road for 5km, dodging speeding cars, with no shade, keeping going by counting off the steps: 100 to a finger, 500m to a fist, 1km for both, and then a few more for luck. By 4,000 my body told me to stop, and I realised I'd walked for 18km on caffeine and water with only the odd photo stop, so I dug out the enormous cheese and tomato baguette the hotel had armed me with, and sat on the cemetery steps at Sivizzano for a time, before picking up my sticks and marching on. 200m further on was a bar.

A little further on, the Via has a summer route, crossing and recrossing a torrente 

and weaving through trees and fields, with more broom, before rejoining the main road just before the Bardone turn off.

Up steeply then to the well-kept hamlet of Bardone and its little medieval pieve, 

where the community has a little shady, grassy area with swings, slides and tables and chairs, looking out at a marvellous view of fields, trees and swathes of broom.  

The next stage, which will be serious uphillery, starts here, but tomorrow I transfer to Previdè.

Today I had a conversation with the taxi driver's Australian wife, on the car's speakers. And then he took me to the parmesan factory just up the road from the hotel, which has a deli, windows onto the dairy, a restaurant and ample verandahs. Focaccia and gelato and fresh milk were then ingested.