14 down, 30 more to go
The stars are finally aligned again, and I’m back on the road for chapter 3 of this 10-part saga. Clear sky, not too warm, I have someone who can come pick me up and drive me back to my car, the calendar is empty, so we’re going for it. Contrary to the previous two segments of this walk, this one’s quite lean on the churches department—we’ll only see 3 of them—but it’s by far the most challenging one from a physical perspective. That is, if you’re a sane person and you do these walks the way they’re intended to be walked. There’s an upcoming one that’ll likely be more challenging, but we’ll get there eventually. For now, in front of us, we have about 16 kilometers to walk and roughly 1600 meters of elevation to gain. So we better get going. Breakfast is in—coffee and bread with Nutella + peanut butter if you’re wondering—and after a short drive, we’re back at the same parking spot where we ended our walk a few weeks back. Flip flops are off, hiking shoes are on, sprayed some SPF50+ on my face and head, and we’re ready to walk. I say we, but it’s just me. Well, me and you reading this. I walked this one solo, but it is quite fun to do these hikes while keeping in mind that I’ll have to write this newsletter. I’m very much enjoying it. We cross the road, walk through another parking lot, and we immediately see sings that tell us that we’re on the correct track. Quite a few trails run through here, apparently, I counted at least 4 different ones. But we’re here to follow the yellow and white marks (for the most part), so over the bridge we go and across the fields. We’re not even 5 minutes in, and already there’s a steep stone stair in front of us. We have 1600 meters to climb after all, we better start sooner rather than later. The initial part of the trail was a bit overgrown, and I was worried it was going to continue like that for quite some time because this is not a trail that sees a lot of traffic but, thankfully, that wasn’t the case. I was also surprised by how varied the trail is at the beginning. We’re not even 15 minutes in, and we have already walked through fields, up stone stairs, and now we’re on a stone “bridge”. And shortly after that, here we are climbing another stone stair, but this time built as part of the dry stone wall. Big fan of these walls, they’re so cool. The forest itself is also quite nice here. The problem we have at the moment is that as soon as the warm season hits, the vegetation explodes, and sometimes the trails become an absolute mess. 15 minutes into the walk and we have now connected with a proper road, and we’re no longer on a trail. There are a lot of these roads around here. They’re service roads for people who have properties, but they’re closed to general traffic. Still, it’s quite rare to see cars on these and you usually only see mountain bikes. Actually, you usually see nobody on these roads. We’re now almost at the first exciting part of this journey. The yellow and white marks take us right, but that’s the normal path. We’re going left because we have one of those pesky variants to take care of and, as you know, I don’t want to walk the same road twice which means I made some changes to the original route. The problem is, I am not 100% certain the trail I saw on the map exists. It’s there on the map, sure, but a lot of times I saw lines on maps that were not there in reality. Thankfully for us, the trail is there—and it is steep—and we can continue forward since the first church is not far from here. We have already gained enough elevation to see things from above, and the view is lovely. And just like that, we’re at the site of the church of San Leonardo Abate (12/44) likely built around 1540. The church is similar to many of the others we saw in previous walks, but the interesting aspect of this one is that it has the old bell visible on the outside porch. Apparently the was a bell tower that got demolished, and I guess they decided to put the bell on display. I tried to take a picture of the inside, but it was too sunny. And in case you’re wondering, the church still has a bell outside. This church is the one that’s part of the variant, so we’re now standing at the end of that part of the trail. Which means we need to walk back to the main path, so off we go in that direction. The weather is still absolutely gorgeous. Out of the woods, across some fields, through a tiny, tiny village, and we’re now back on asphalt for a little bit, heading towards the next church, which is just right around the corner. But first, no, not a Mary, we get our first Jesus out in the wild. There’s gonna be a few more, I think we’ll see more Jesuses and Marys this time around. I should probably start counting these. 1 hour and 15 minutes in, and we have reached the church of San Zenone (13/44). Which, I’ll be honest with you, is everything but small. Consecrated in 1493, it’s probably the most luxurious one of the bunch I’ve seen so far. And it has a nice view. If you’re team Mary, it’s your time to be happy because look what we have here, just outside the church. This also doubles as a memorial for the fallen during both world wars. We’re only 20% into this walk, and we have already seen 2 of the 3 churches we’ll visit today and the next one is waiting for us roughly 3kms ahead. So we leave civilization behind us, we climb up through the forest, and we emerge on another of those service roads. I decided to try something different this time around since I was alone, and I recorded a couple of minutes of the walk. It’s unlisted on YouTube; hopefully, you don’t get bombarded by ads. The video is embedded below, or you can watch it on YouTube . Part of me was tempted to title it “You’ll not believe what happened on this trail”. On our way up, we stumble on this interesting-looking tree. I have no idea what could have caused this. If you happen to know, send me an email. I’d love to learn more about this. Also on our way up, in the middle of nowhere, stuck inside a retaining wall, another Jesus. Finally out of the woods and back into civilisation for a little bit. We’re almost halfway through our walk, and I was planning to take a quick break after 2 hours, but the remaining church was not too far, so we keep going. Like my dog, they’re also not massive fans of the hot weather. We’re less than 200 meters from the final church, where I was planning to take a quick break, but look how lovely this spot is! There’s a bench—yes, there is a bench hidden in the tall grass—two big trees that provide some much-needed shade, and a swing! We’ve found our resting spot. And since we’re stopping here, I'll use this opportunity to let my shirt dry a little bit. This place is so relaxing, I contemplated taking a nap, but we still have 8kms to walk and some 800 or so meters of elevation to gain, so the nap will have to wait. Shirt is back on, backpack is back on, we’re walking again, ready to visit the third and final church of the day, the church of San Lorenzo Martire (14/44) We’re now done with the churches, and we can set our sights on the top of Mount Matajur, our next target. The official trail would not take us up there and walk around it but, come on, if we get that close to the summit, we might as well go up to the top. And so into the forest we go again. I’m not sure who’s getting a point here between team Jesus and team Mary. I’ll let you decide. I never walked on this side of the mountain. I walked this general area many, many times, but never walked here, and I’m loving it. I also found this interesting construction. It’s currently used as a shed, but I wonder if it was used for something else in the past. It does look quite old. Time to record another short video , I think one day I should attempt to make a video of a full hike recorded in 60 seconds chunks all stitched together. Could be fun, I might do it the next time around. We’ll be out of the forest soon, but first we need to walk through a lot of flowers. There are so many colours out here at the moment, between the flowers and the butterflies. What a lovely time of the year this is. We have emerged, we’re now fully under the sun, and it is hot. I’m also starting to feel the fatigue a little bit. But we’re powering on because we’re almost there. We also have a great view on a ridge I’m dying to walk, but can’t figure out the logistic of the trip. It’s a 30+ kms walk from one end to the other, I can’t take the dog with me, and I also can’t leave him alone at home that long. So this is a walk that will have to wait for a better time. But damn if it is tempting. The summit is in sight, we’re almost there. That’s not the end of the walk, just the highest point, but once there, walking the final part is gonna be super easy since it’s all downhill. And here we are, at the top of Mount Matajur , quite literally on the border between Italy and Slovenia. I hiked this mountain more times than I can remember, at all times of the day, during all the seasons and with all sorts of weather. I walked it with snow, with rain, with winds at 100kmh, at night, at sunset, at sunrise, you name it. And on the other side, we have a view of lovely Slovenia. Way too many people up here today though, but that was expected. This is a very easy hike, and plenty of people come up here over the weekend. We’re not gonna spend much time up here, but I might come back another time and take you for a hike with me from a different route. That could be fun. Today’s hike is gonna end down there, at the parking lot next to Rifugio Pelizzo. Down the mountain we go, which feels so nice after having walked uphill for the entire hike. I could go on another 6 hours, but there’s no need to do that because we only have 1km left to walk. And just like that, we’re at the parking lot. I actually walked down some more to a secondary parking spot because there were too many people yelling and screaming at the main one. And the next chunk of this walk passes through here anyway, so next time we’ll start from this same spot. And there you have it, we have walked from Pulfero sitting at 185 meters above sea level, up to the top of mount Matajur at 1643 meters and visited 3 churches on our way up. This was fun, and less tiring than I was expecting. The data recorded by my watch during the walk is available if you’re interested in that type of stuff, and I have dumped all my photos on the shared iCloud album . The only thing left to do now is eat a proper post-hike snack. See you next time! You love the outdoors and RSS. You're one of the special ones.
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