Stage 31. Gambassi Terme to San Gimignano. Vineyards, towers and frescoes. Part 1.

Early morning departure from my slightly down at heel B&B on the outskirts, just as the sun was rising and mist lay in ribbons between the ridges.

Breakfast of pistachio croissant and ample cups of cappuccino to fuel me, a pharmacy stop for stronger anti-mosquito lotion, although I fear it's bolting stable doors, then off into the rolling vineyards of some serious wine country

and dirt tracks.

For the first time on the Via, a toilet!  It's worth saying that I do spend a fair proportion of the walking day looking for a secluded spot for relief; the wooded sections are fine, those long ones along roads are agony, and, in the northern rice fields, where there's no undergrowth and a multiply-windowed farmhouse generally looming nearby, you can guarantee that just as I found a suitably angled corner of a ditch, a tractor would suddenly sprout up out of the ground, where previously there'd been not a soul in sight.  I would have kissed the owner of this vineyard, had they been around.