Walking with Angels. Pontremoli to Villafranca

This is a short walking day today we got up at our usual time after a wonderful rest in a warm room. I stress warm because Europe has a tendency to not have the heat on, especially in the Parrochial or hostels. After breakfast in the room we walked with Celine through town until the VF route left SS62. Celine is walking the highway SS62 to Aulla and perhaps farther to try to get to Rome by October 31st.

We started to follow a large VF sign direction, but after 15 minutes we saw no other markings and backtracked back to the original sign. It was then we noticed that the sign was only for bikes and we had to follow the SS62 farther than we thought. It was a nice day for a walk and we wondered through the valley between the mountains. All at once we were confronted with bicycles. They were having a cross country bicycle race on the same trail as we were walking on. At first it was amusing seeing all these bicycles but then we found ourselves dodging out of the way. We are talking literally hundreds of bikes along with a few motorcycles thrown in. After awhile they took a different route but again we ran into them on a narrow track through the woods. We had to cross a couple of small streams along the way but we are getting better at stone stepping over the water. Getting our boots really wet is not something we like to do if we can help it. We eventually reached Villafranca about 1pm and after approaching a few Italian ladies along the way, found our room for the night. It is no castle but it has it's own bathroom and is nice and bright. There is also a restaurant downstairs for dinner tonight.Tuscany seems to have a lot of variety of landscapes and rolling hills(mountains?). Tomorrow is another short day but it will have some climbs thrown in as well.