Stage 20b and 21a: Bardone to Berceto. Wild flower meadows and woods.

A stiff pull up from Bardone, but I was soon walking in woods, looking back down across wild flowers to the Taro valley.

The paths wound up and down, sometimes extremely steeply, through the dense woodland which hugs the mountains.

Then, suddenly, you'd come out on an open ridge to vast views across the valleys.

The species are diverse; I've seen walnut, chestnut, hazel, oak, cherry, birch, elder, acacia, and the ubiquitous poplar, as well as several I can't identify. There was a long stretch of conifer, just before Cassio, where my tracking skills were tested, as the path was not signposted, and some foresters had usefully shoved cut branches over the path, completely obscuring it and creating an obstacle course, which I nonetheless managed to negotiate successfully.

Through Cassio, the halfway point,

And on past an ostello, where I found a stamp, the Via now merging with the main road, now veering off through more woodland, and singing "Climb every Mountain" as I crested yet another steep hill.  

Just outside Berceto, there were fantastic views across alpine meadows bursting with long swaying grasses and swathes of wildflowers, and my inner Julie Andrews was duly satisfied. 

I met a giant of a man on one of these high meadows, who had walked for five weeks from the Netherlands and is heading to Rome.

Into Berceto, to be met by my hosts, and a drive on switchback mountain roads dripping with bright yellow laburnum trees in full flower.

This was a hard stage, although it was a cooler day, but a really beautiful one, and certainly in the top five of the Via since the Alps.