Today was 16 miles walked and 700′ climbed, for totals of 257 miles walked and 25,500′ climbed.

For the trip, we’ve averaged 12.2 miles per day and about 1,200′ of climbing.  These are probably the lowest averages we’ve had on a Camino, but … so what?  It’s the journey, not the pace!

To see where we’ve been, it’s useful to pull back our map of our travels

Our journey, this year, is the GRAY path.  We have now traveled about 2,300 miles on European trails in the last decade!

There is more remaining. God willing, we still have to connect the “dots” in Italy, as we are still missing a section of our walking, from Pavia (where we are today) to Lucca (where we started in 2019 when we traveled to Rome).

So, speaking of Rome:  We were stopped on our walk (about 4 miles out of Pavia) by a local cyclist. He could see we were Pilgrims by our backpacks, hiking poles, and dust- covered shoes. We’ve clearly been “out”for a while! In broken English, he asked us “are you walking to Rome?” We said,  “no, just Pavia”. He looked bewildered! Pavia is only 4 miles away?  That’s a morning stroll! How could you only be going to Pavia and look so … so trail worn? It was only when we explained that we started in Lausanne,  400 kilometers back, that he smiled widely and accepted us! He called us “Lupos” (wolves, in Italian,  which we believe/ hope is a compliment), then wished us well.

In fact, it is a bit weird not finishing at a memorable finish, like Santiago, or Rome, or even Le Puy (the French consider LePuy to be the “capital” of European caminos). Finishing in Pavia is kind of like stopping in Topeka,  Kansas. It’s a place … but why?

Our journey today was beautiful.

And we were escorted for much of the journey by the Italian armada

Also, we learned our lesson about lunch spots yesterday. So today, we stopped by a beautiful river

We followed that river for about 5 miles, finishing by exiting the river path and into a beautiful ancient college town.

And now we’re here!

Tomorrow, we take the train to Milan, then a plane to Paris … and on to home!

As the late Jimmy Buffett sang, “its been a lovely cruise!”