Thursday 3rd September: Cool morning, warm cloudy day, blue skies then misty rain: 12°C to 24ºC.
Santa Croce: 15K: 10.00am to 5.30pm: Lazy day walking to Chiavenna
Accommodation: Private Holiday House Santa Croce, Italy
Walking the Val Bregaglia track
Following the stream to Chiavenna
Follow the leader down a 4m high stone wall that leads to nowhere
Trying to get off the stone wall
Jenny's stuck half way down
Coffee outside council chambers
Narrow streets of Chiavenna deserted between 12 and 3pm
Lunch on the Marmitte dei Gigante overlooking Chiavenna
Highlight of the day was just being in the Val Bragaglia, a beautiful narrow valley in the north of Italy that connects to St Morritz in Switzerland and seeing the change in building styles between the Swiss and Italians. You could say the houses in Italy are less neat and more higgledy piggledy but they certainly have a lot of character.
The morning started late. It's 8am when we are all awake in this quiet village of Santa Croce. There's no high mountain passes today, just a casual walk down the valley to Chiavenna, a larger village at the head of three valleys to Splugen, St Morritz and Lake Como. We pack a picnic lunch and head out down the valley along the track labelled Val Bregaglia. It's a very narrow valley with a busy road from St Moritz through the centre and a walking/cycling track weaving back and forwards across the road.
Graham and Jenny have been here before with their friends Mark and Susan who own and who renovated the magnificent house where we're staying, so Graham knows the way. (ha ha). We get half way down the valley and Graham suggests we walk through the forest where he had walked last year to Chiavenna. We walk up and up, across private property, until an old Italian woman shoos us out. Up and up again through long thorny bushes until we stumble into a large stone wall which we climb and start to walk along down to the road.
One hundred metres along the top of this wall, playing follow the leader behind Graham, and the wall is getting taller and further from the ground until we get to a barbed wire gate across the top and can't go any further because it’s impossible to climb over without doing some serious damage – to ourselves, not the gate. We're 4 metres atop the wall at this point and need to abseil down the wall to the bottom, which is not easy and Jenny gets stuck half way down. One by one we all toe it down. From here on, the majority decision is to go back down the road - enough adventure for one day.
One hour later, it's time for a coffee break outside the municipal building (council chambers) in the car park. It's then an easy walk down the road into the narrow streets of Chiavenna which is deserted and every shop in town is closed between 12 and 3pm – siesta time. We decide to climb up to the Marmitte dei Gigante, a huge rock about one k behind the village with seats to enjoy the view – a good spot for a lunch.
After a leisurely picnic of bread and cheese, we clamber back down to the village station to visit the tourist office to find out the train times down to Lake Como, 15k away and too far to do a return walk tomorrow. Also we need to find the Vodaphone shop to buy a sim card for the router in our Santa Croce house, and the local supermarket to buy food supplies for tonight - mostly cheese and beers.
On the walk back, Jenny leads the way to avoid any Graham short cuts, and after an hour's brisk walk along the valley track, we're back in Santa Croce, buying a few more bits from the local shop which is really the basement of an old Italian woman's house, then up to our place for beer and cheese just in time before the storm hits.
Dinner is ham steaks, tomato, onion and capsicum washed down with a cleanskin local red wine, and some Lindt Chocolate. The next 2 hours are spent trying to connect to the internet, which Ian finally sorts out, and we're all off to bed, ready for a day on Lake Como.