2026-10-18 00:40:00
We’re down to the final four segments, but we only have three walks left to do. The plan for today is to walk segment number 7 and also attach to it the beginning part of number 8. 23km, 870m of ascent, 1250m of descent. Next time, we’ll finish 8th and attach 9th to it, but that’s a problem for future me.
I’ll be honest with you, I’m kinda tired of these walks. Especially because this second half stretches across trails I walked countless times before. But I also want to walk the whole loop and visit all these churches, so we won’t stop here.
But we’ll move fast this time around. There’s no point in taking a million pictures at this point. The scenery is mostly the same, the overall area is still the same, so we might as well use this as an opportunity to do some cardio training.
The humidity is very high early in the morning, but it’s gonna get warm fast. The trail is gonna take us down for a bit, then back up, then all the way down next to the Slovenian border, all the way back up again, and the final stretch is gonna go down again, to the final church of today’s walk and also my car, since it’s parked right next to it.
First stop is gonna be the church of San Giovanni Battista (29/44), and on our way there, we see the church of San Paolo Apostolo far in the distance. It would be part of this segment of the loop, but we visited it on my previous walk, as I was walking all the way back to my car.
The church of San Giovanni Battista is in an amazing location, and out of the 44, this one’s probably the one I’ve seen the most throughout the years. There’s a lovely short loop that I often walk with the dog, and the view from up here is great.
Almost exactly an hour in, and we have reached the first POI I have marked on the map. I’m pleased with the pace so far; this is enjoyable.
I’m starting to walk down the trail I mentioned a moment ago when all of a sudden a formidable foe blocks my path: a herd of goats. Well, maybe herd is a bit of an exaggeration since it’s only 6 of them. But these were just out on their own—and were shitting everywhere—and not only did they have no intention to move away from the trail, one of them was not in the mood to let me pass.
Love goats, they’re fun. But can also be jerks, and the last thing I need is to find myself fighting a bunch of goats on a rocky trail. Plus, there’s a very convenient alternative trail just around the corner, so better to leave these alone.
Down, and down, and down we go, through the woods, without ever encountering a single soul. That’s honestly the best part about walking these trails: it is incredibly rare to see people. It’s just me and nature. And goats, I guess.
Through a couple of small villages we go—not a single human being in sight—and around the second church of the day, the church of San Bartolomeo Apostolo (30/44) that sits maybe a few hundred meters from the Slovenian border. We’re just a bit more than 2 hours in, and we have already walked half the distance. But we still have most of the uphill part to walk, so we’ll see if we manage to keep up the pace.
Up, and up, and up we go. And up and up the heartbeat also goes. But on our way up with pass next to the third church of the walk, the church of San Tommaso Apostolo (31/44).
There’s a house for sale literally right next to the church if you’re interested. Also another one for sale maybe 30 meters before it. If you like quiet places, this is the location for you. In the middle of absolutely nowhere. We’re not even a quarter of the way through this uphill section, so we better keep going.
Less than three hours into this walk—and almost 16.5km—we have reached the fourth church of the day, the church of Sant’Antonio da Padova
(32/44).
This is another one I have visited a bunch of times before, so no point in spending time here considering we still have the last uphill stretch to finish. I knew this was the last challenging part, so it was fun to keep pushing, and I think I peaked at 168bpm. But it’s gonna be almost entirely downhill from now onwards.
We take a quick detour to hit the fifth church of the day, the church of San Nicolò (33/44).
I wrote about this one in a previous edition of From the Summit. Another one of those churches I visited a lot over the years because it’s another place I walk often with the dog.
This would have been the final church of the day, and the normal route would take me west. But we’re going east, and then cut down through the forest to reach what would be the first church of the 8th segment. As predictable, this alternative path takes me through a trail that is overgrown but, oh well, who cares.
And just like that we have reached the sixth church of the day, the church of Sant’Abramo Eremita (34/44).
Wonderful location, with Mount Matajur always in the background. I have to admit that a few of these churches are placed in lovely locations; this is like the perfect spot to just chill and read a book on a sunny day. I might come up and do that soon; I ordered a bunch of new books just the other day.
Final stretch, only a bit more than 1km left to walk and then we’re done for the day. Risked falling on my back on a very slippery and steep part of this final stretch but thankfully I still have good reflexes. A bit more than 4 hours in and we have arrived at our final destination, the church of San Leonardo Abate (35/44).
I have to say, going fast made this walk a lot more fun. I might do it again. I’m glad we’re down into single digits; I can smell the end of this loop. And after that, we can focus on walking other places and see things that are not churches! As always, if you want to stalk my walk, here is the data recorded by my watch.
See you next time.
You love the outdoors and RSS. You're one of the special ones.
2026-10-16 23:35:00
Back in early June I blogged about my summer fitness challenge. The two main goals were to lose some weight—from 89.6kg to 85.3kg, the oldest measure I had on record from late 2015—and also to get back into a better shape than I was a decade ago.
The weight goal was easily quantifiable; I still have the same exact scale I was using 10 years ago and so it was only a matter of jumping on it every morning and track the progress. As for losing weight, I didn’t really have much of a plan other than not eating like an idiot and moving more. And I guess it worked. I’m now hovering around 82kg, going up or down depending how much I decide to eat—or not to eat—any given day. Last time I was this light I was probably in my late teens. And I think this is the perfect weight for my lifestyle, so I’m planning to stay at this level for the foreseeable future.
As for being in better shape, that’s a bit trickier to evaluate. My legs are definitely not as strong as they were back when I was in my mid-20s, but I was also playing A LOT of basketball back then, while now I play exactly zero. I do walk and hike a lot more though, and I overall feel much better.
So, success! Both goals achieved. Now what? Now it’s time to start another challenge, and this time it will span 12 months. And that’s because even though I do feel better, I’m nowhere near satisfied with myself and my body. There is so much room for improvement, and I realised that I need to have stupid challenges to keep myself motivated. So this is what’s on the menu for the next 12 months.
First, I need better cardio. I have never trained it in my life, and my cardio sucks. The realistic goal I currently have set for myself is to run a 5k in under 25 minutes and with a < 150 HR. There’s also a trail I hiked recently that I’ll go hike again next year, and the goal there is to do the first part in less than an hour. It took me almost two last time.
Next, I need to build at least some upper body muscle mass. I hate training upper body, especially because none of the activities I enjoy doing involves upper body strength, but it’s nice to have a balanced body and so I need to take care of that. This is a goal that’s harder to track, but I do have a reference body I’m aiming for, and I am taking progress photos at the beginning of the month, so at the end of the 12 months we can compare and see if I managed to get there.
Lastly, I want to improve overall flexibility. I am doing some stretching regularly, but I’ve always had a goal in mind, going back years, and that was to manage to get in full lotus position. So we’re aiming for that in the next 12 months.
This is gonna be fun. I don’t plan to constantly write about this because there’s not much to say on a regular basis, but if there’s anything you’re interested in, feel free to email me and ask.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Connect via email :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month
2026-10-03 14:45:00
For the past decade, every time I went up to the mountains here in my area, I got the chance to look at one particular mountain ridge standing there silently in the background.
It spans roughly 30km, east to west. On one side, the Slovenian one, there’s the town of Kobarid. On the other, just more mountains. I’ve considered walking this ridge for years, every time making a different plan for how to tackle it. Some people do it in multiple days, sleeping either outside or in one of the various huts that are scattered all around. Other people split it in chunks, walking one section at a time. None of those options is either appealing or available to me at this moment in time. The only option I have is to park my car on one end, walk the whole thing in one go and have someone pick me up on the other side.
As I said, it’s roughly 30km and some 2200 meters of ascent. It’s nothing crazy, but at the same time it’s not a walk I can go do completely at random. It does require at least some preparation, and part of that includes walking the two sections at the beginning and at the end, while the middle part is just one long crest so I’m not worried about that.
To make my life easier, I could walk this west to east because that means doing only ~1800 meters of ascent, but what’s the fun in doing that? 2200 is way more appealing than 1800. So the plan is to end the walk on the Italian side, touching the summit of Mount Mali Varh for last and then descending to the little village of Micottis some 1000 or so meters below.
The various maps do show a trail that goes up to that summit, but I learned not to blindly trust maps because more than once I reached places where trails were supposed to be there only to then find myself standing in front of either an impenetrable wall of vegetation or absolutely nothing. Speaking of maps, I recently learned about the existence of hiking.waymarkedtrails.org, which is a fantastic resource if you hike around Europe.
The plan was to go up to Monte Testa Grande through the CAI trail 710, walk the final km or so of the ridge, and then come back down through that trail I spotted on the map. But during my preliminary search, I learned that the trail I want to walk on my way down for sure exists because they run a race on it! It’s the Ultra Vertickal Contesa and much respect to the people—and their knees—who go up this trail at that pace because it’s an enjoyable 37% of average slope and it looks something like this:
And yes, as soon as I saw 37% I knew I had to go check how bad it looks and yup, it is bad. And nope, the trail doesn’t zig-zag its way up to the top. It’s basically a straight line. The people running the race do turn to the right near the top because the finish line is at the summit of Mount Contesa, which is the second to last peak of the ridge.
Being up here, walking the final bit of this ridge made me even more convinced of my plan. We’ll walk this whole thing in one go, and it’s gonna be awesome. The view is amazing; you can see the sea in the far distance on one side and the Julian Alps on the other.
Descending down through the CAI 710 was also quite the experience. The trail is incredibly vertical in certain sections; according to Alltrails it’s anything between 50% to 60% (the uphill section peaks at 64%) and not very well maintained. I think I spent almost as much time coming down as it took me to go up, which is unusual. But the scenery was lovely.
The trail ends—or begins, depending on the way you want to look at it—in the village of Monteaperta, so the only thing left to do was to walk my way back to the parking spot where I left my car.
Very happy with this first preparatory walk. The ridge is nice, going up this stupidly steep trail was an experience, my cardio is shit, but we’re working on that, and I’m now even more convinced I’m gonna walk this whole crest one of these days. And I have a potentially quirky idea for how to share that walk, but more on that later.
You love the outdoors and RSS. You're one of the special ones.
2026-09-28 22:20:00
Over the past few years, I spent way more time than I probably should have thinking about my life. And the way I usually look at it is by asking two fundamental questions.
The first question is “do I want to have a life?”. You might think this is a silly question to even ask, but since I was a teen I’ve always had a weird relationship with the concept of death, and as a result of that, the whole idea of being alive at all has never been an absolute certainty. Which is why I periodically ask myself the question, and so far the answer has clearly always been yes, and that is why I’m still here. Figuring out an answer to this question is often pretty straightforward, and the answer is binary, so there’s no point in discussing it further.
The second, and more interesting, question I ask myself is “what kind of life do I want to live?”. Finding an answer to this one is a lot trickier. But one framework I’ve been using lately is to visualise my life as a triangle. I’ll explain what I mean, but I don’t plan to add a drawing so you’ll have to picture this in your head.
The first vertex represents the “individual me”. These are all the things that are related to myself as an individual, as if I was existing in a vacuum. Things like health, personal aspirations, dreams and goals, experiences I want to live, skills I want to acquire, my job and so on. I know we don’t really exist in a vacuum, but you get the point.
The second vertex is the “social me” which is the collection of things that are related to other people: relationships, responsibilities toward others, shared goals and dreams, and so on.
The third and final vertex is reality. It represents the current state of my life at this specific moment in time.
These three points are obviously connected; this is a triangle after all, and the distance between them represents how far my current life is from what I want and also how far apart my individual life is from my social life. Those points also define a plane that represents the infinite number of possible lives that are available out there.
In a perfect world, this triangle is collapsed down to a single point, because that would mean that there is a perfect overlap between what I want for myself, what I want for my relationships with the other people in my life, and the life I’m actually living. The aspiration is to get to that point, but making the triangle as small as possible is a worthy endeavour.
I find this framework helpful because if the goal is to make the overall area smaller, there are a couple of different ways I can go about achieving that. I can try to improve my life and move that vertex closer to the other two; that is one obvious approach. But I can also decide to willingly move one of the other two vertices: I can change my goals and my ambitions, for example, or I can change the people I surround myself with in order to live relationships that are more aligned with the life I want for myself. Or I can combine all those approaches; there’s plenty of flexibility here.
What I do know is that lately I felt this triangle grow bigger, which is precisely what I don’t want it to do. But I also lost track of where those dots are, which is also not ideal.
It’s funny how there are people who have some things figured out, and I’m sitting here, looking inward, and the more I look, the less all this mess makes any semblance of sense. But I guess that’s part of the fun.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Connect via email :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month
2026-09-17 17:05:00
I feel kinda stupid for even saying this, but it’s probably worth saying anyway: companies are not people. Companies don’t make decisions. Companies don’t decide who they want to donate money to. Companies don’t feel shame. Companies don’t learn from their mistakes. Companies don’t have political orientation. Because companies are legal entities, they're a bunch of papers, letters and numbers. That’s what companies are.
When you’re mad at a company, figure out who is actually responsible for the things you’re mad about, and be mad at them. Because people can be held accountable. There’s a reason why, in 1789, it was people’s heads that were rolling on the ground.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Connect via email :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month
2026-09-10 02:50:00
I was planning to write a reply to a post I read earlier today. I sat down in front of my computer, started typing, then a bunch of different people sent me messages for a variety of totally unrelated reasons, and I spent half an hour chatting with them.
When I finally got back to writing the post, I stared at the screen and I was like «what even is the point of writing this?». That is something that happens more and more often, recently. I still believe that dialogue is, by far, the best, and probably only, tool we have to make progress on a multitude of societal issues. At the same time, I’m more and more convinced that dialogue, on the internet, using the public digital spaces we have at our disposal, is almost impossible to have.
Some of the reasons why I think this is the case are not worth repeating; I already wrote about them plenty of times over the years on this site. But one reason I think is worth highlighting is that a core ingredient for healthy dialogue is the ability to listen. But listening is not part of the social internet landscape. You cannot perceive the listening; you can only perceive the saying.
And that is why social media dialogue is fundamentally unhelpful. It’s a lot of saying and not much listening. Which is why it often degrades into the lowest forms of communication: the name-calling, the ridiculing, the mocking, the shouting, the insulting. Not much progress though, which is unfortunate.
Which is why I think sometimes it's better not to say anything. It’s better to simply read, nod along or shake your head, and then move on.
Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.
Connect via email :: Sign my guestbook :: Support for 1$/month