DIRECTIONS CAN BE CONFUSING

The Way of St. Francis

April 28, 2026

Trevi to Clitunno

Miles walked 7.29 miles

It’s another beautiful day in Italy and now ready to leave Trevi and head to the next destination.

Things seem to be going well. We’ve walked out of Trevi and are heading to Clitunno which is just shy of Poreta.

The day is going well. And then…well the road just wasn’t marked as well as I thought it should be. You see I have no sense of direction. My daughter has negative sense of direction so if she thinks she should go right, she should turn left. For me every turn is a crap shoot and today was one of those days.

Here again are the differences between the Camino de Santiago and the Way of St. Francis. The map showed me walking along a trafficked road. A rather busy trafficked I might add. But there was a little path following the road so I took it. This happens a lot in Spain. It’s a safer way to walk. However my little path started curving to the left and going up and up until I was walking through an olive grove. Pleasant but not where I was supposed to be. So I backtracked.

I followed the road until I saw the blue and yellow marker that moved me on to a safer path.

Next the guide book said to go past the iron cross. The iron cross in Spain is a large formidable structure with piles of stones that people have left

Again the road was not marked well and after a few starts and backtracks my friend and I stopped at a corner to try and get our bearings when she looked up and said, “There’s the iron cross.“

Eventually we walked into the town of Clitunno and found a place for lunch.

Arancini: rice ball with meat and cheese stuffed inside and deep fried. One of Italy’s best creations.

After lunch we switched to gps to find our hotel. Don’t tell Google Maps, but sometimes it’s confusing. We meandered through a neighborhood getting lost and finally asked a young girl sunbathing and she gave us completely different directions. So we gave up and went back to the cafe to call a taxi.

We asked the owner, Fabio about a cab and he jumped up and said he’d take us. His car was a little dirty because he said he’d been driving the tractor earlier. But he got us to our hotel and insisted that we not pay him.

We were so grateful because our hotel was at the top of the mountain next to a beautiful castle. It was originally two monasteries. The older of the two was built in the twelfth century and the newer in the fourteenth century. Eventually they merged. I doubt it was a hostile takeover, probably so few monks that it made sense to become one monastery.