2026-05-02 21:25:00
It’s so funny how much a creature like this silly dog can change someone’s life. He certainly change mine, for better or for worse, and he also changed me in the process. Both physically and spiritually.
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2026-05-01 19:00:00
This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Hyde Stevenson, whose blog can be found at lazybea.rs.
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Hyde Stevenson is a nickname I've been using online for years. It's a mix from Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and its author Robert Louis Stevenson. Privacy is important to me, so I generally avoid using my real name.
My parents are from Serbia, but I was born in Paris. I lived in London, and, now, I live in southern Europe. More vitamin D was needed in my life.
I had two passions as a kid: sport, and computers.
Sport has always been a big part of my life.
When I was a kid, all my friends played football, but I was always more into basketball. I don't mind watching a good football game, but that's where it ends.
But, basketball is another thing. I'm a big Nikola Jokic fan, and I haven't missed a Denver game for the last four years.
When we were kids, we all dreamt about the NBA. There weren't many games available to watch. We had one guy who ordered games on tape direct from the US. Then, we shared, and copied them. Basketball was our life. We played at school, after the school, the weekends. We were chasing the best playgrounds to compete with other players. It was great.
It was the end of the 80s. Bird, Magic, Jordan, the Pistons Bad Boys, and also Yugoslavian players like Vlade Divac and Dražen Petrovic. The Dream Team too, the real one. I'll always wonder what might've happened if the war in the Balkans hadn't happened and the USA and Yugoslavia had played each other in the Olympics final.
That love for the game made me play at a semi-pro level. But, a bad coach put me off the courts. I was young and didn't understand why I couldn't play more when I knew I had the level. I remember one shooting training where I got 46/50 on 3pts, and the guy behind me got 36/50. Did the coach say something to me? Nope.
That was enough, and I took a break from the game for a few years to pursue another passion: boxing.
My love of boxing probably stems from those nights when my father would wake me up at 4am to watch Mike Tyson's fights.
I've always loved boxing. My father's mate's nephew was a boxer. He invited me to train at his gym. And I got hooked. Sad story about this young man. He went pro, but after a bar fight, I heard he was murdered out for revenge by someone involved in that brawl.
I also had a great group of friends, and we trained grappling, and MMA for four or five years. A good friend trained us grappling. Today, he trains fighters who fought in the UFC, and got lucky to meet many MMA fighters like Jon Jones. Another one, Guillaume Kerner trained us Thai boxing.
Guillaume was one of the first western European Thai boxer who won a World Title in Thailand. You can check some highlights of his career.
That was before I moved to London. When I got back in France, I was training exclusively in boxing until 2021, when I moved abroad. Since I relocated, I've really missed the camaraderie of the boxing club. I'm lucky enough to have a garage where I've hung a punching bag and can keep training.
For those interested, I started last year a #50kPushUps challenge. The goal is to make 50,000 push-ups in one year.
I could write many anecdotes about people I met, but I want also to share my other passion: computers.
When I meet people, the first thing they say to me is that I don't look like a computer guy. Stereotypes... 🤷
My passion probably started when one night my father brought home the VCS, the Video Computer System, later renamed the Atari 2600. It's not a computer, but that's where it all started.
Later, I asked if I could have a computer, and they offered me the Amstrad CPC464 with its 64Kb RAM, and cassette deck.
Later, my grandmother offered me the updated version the CPC6128 with the same RAM, but with a 3-inch floppy disk.
After that I had many other ones. I started to build them. I tried my first Linux distro in 1995. It was a Debian. Today, my main distribution is still Debian, even if I tried, and used many others.
I've tried probably many window managers over the years. But, for the last 15 years more or less, I've been using only awesomewm, a tiling window manager, light, and customizable if you know Lua a bit.
I could write a lot about Linux, but I don't think it'd be of much interest to our readers. What I can say is that my love for computers is what got me to where I am today in my career.
My first blog was about Debian, the GNU/Linux distribution. It was in 2001, and it was called debianworld.org. I used to write how-tos, and articles about Linux. I used the blog to post English to French translation of the Debian Weekly News, but also the Securing Debian Manual, and some part of the Advanced Bash scripting guide. Then in 2014, after a long summer, I found out I got cyber squatted. And, just like this it was gone.
Then, for five years, I didn't set up anything online until 2019. I met a colleague that asked me if I participated in any conferences, or if I had a blog. That's when I wanted to have a personal place online again.
I love bears, that's why I chose that domain name. And, lazy, because I am sometimes.
About the theme, it took me some time to create it, and be happy with the final result. But, then, it didn't really change.
It depends. First, I need a topic, or an idea.
Sometimes a blog post, a news, a new tool, or basically anything can inspire me to write directly a post.
But, often, I like to go through my Zettelkasten.
Every morning, I use this keybinding
English not being my mother tongue, I read the different parts multiple times to be sure to make sense. My goal is to make simple sentences, but that connect with everyone.
Once done, I check if some grammar hasn't been forgotten by my LSP.
Then, a script will sync the content to my blog, and post it also on Mastodon.
I don't. I just need my laptop, a terminal, and a coffee. That's all.
Maybe the physical space could help some people. Maybe if I had a seaside view, it could impact my creativity 😅.
Previously, for other projects, I used Drupal, then Wordpress. But, for this one, I wanted something easily to maintain. No database, or plugins updates. Something simple. That's why I went for a SSG, a Static Site Generator.
I chose Hugo, and I've been happy with it for years.
There is some JavaScript from Carl Schwan's post to add Mastodon's comment on the blog. So far it works well. Everything is hosted on a dedicated server.
All post have been written in Neovim, my go-to editor, on a Tuxedo laptop. My local repository has a backup on a Synology DS1812+ NAS, which also had a remote backup. That repository is pushed on a private Codeberg repository too.
Domain name was purchase at Unlimited.rs, a registar in Serbia. Originally, the name of the blog was lazybear.io, but since the announcement that it will disappear in the future, that's when I switched to a Serbian one. For other projects, I use also Porkbun that I love.
I don't think so.
A few of my friends suggested that I should specialize and monetize it, but that was never its goal.
It's my little corner on the web where I can do whatever I want. I can tweak it as I want, try new things, post photos the way I want, without having to follow a specific format.
It was always meant to be my place to experiment.
I don't track visitors, I don't care about numbers.
Now, and then, I get some emails, and I like the discussions I get there. Keep them coming 🙌
The domain name is around €24 per year. The dedicated server around €30 per month, but I use it for other things too.
It doesn't generate any money. I could add a Ko-fi account, and maybe I will... just in case. 😇
If people want to monetize it, I don't see any issue with that. Everyone is free to do whatever they want.
Ok, I have a couple of them!
And, two French photographers:
I also have a list of blogs I enjoy, and follow.
Yeah start a blog, value your privacy, and send an email to Manuel so we can find more about you.
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2026-05-01 00:50:00
We had another lovely, sunny weekend last week, and that means I walked the second of the ten segments of the 44 votive churches loop. This time around, I didn’t have to mess with the route in order to hit all the churches in one go because there were no variants. And, like last time, I was not alone. I had a friend coming with me, which is always nice. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy walking solo, but I also enjoy walking in good company.
The plan was the same: meeting at the arrive, leaving my car there, driving back to the starting point and take off from there. And that’s exactly what we did. The last time we parked some 600 meters away from the actual end—because there was no parking there—so the first chunk of today’s walk is the final part of segment number 1.
Clearly visible on the left, up on the hills, is the small village of Antro where we’re headed. One of the six churches we’ll visit on this walk is waiting for us right there, and it’s a good one.
But first, without even realising it, we’re already at the site of the church of San Luca Evangelista (7/44). I’ll be honest with you, this is quite an uninspiring one. It’s also not in a nice location, very close to the street. I’d have completely missed it if it weren’t for my watch. And this post is sponsored by Suunto… just kidding. It is quite handy to have the whole route planned on the watch though, because it vibrates when I’m near one of the churches since are stored as POIs.
No pictures of the inside since the windows were boarded and the door was locked. All of them are locked, quite annoying if you ask me. But that’s modern society for you. The church was likely first built around the year 1250, but it was for sure consecrated in 1568 by the Bishop of Cattaro, also governor of the Patriarchate of Aquileia.
We leave the first church behind us, we turn left, we cross the Natisone, and we start climbing up, heading towards Antro.
The first part of this walk is not super inspiring since it’s on paved roads, but it is what it is. One day, I might attempt to make a modified version where I only walk on asphalt when absolutely necessary. Could be fun.
We pass through Biacis and next to the Antro Bank Slab, an old artefact symbol of the self-government of the Friulian Slavia, developed around the end of the XI century.
The path takes us behind the stone and out of the village, and we’re headed in the direction of the church of San Giacomo Apostolo (8/44) next to the “castle” of Ahrensperg. I put it in quotes because it’s more like a nice cottage with a tower than an actual castle, but the whole place is lovely, I have to say.
Dual bells, like most of these churches, and I had to resist the temptation to make them ring since the ropes were dangling right there, out in the open. I can be quite the mischief, but I also don’t like to bother people, so we didn’t touch anything. Also no way to take pictures of the inside, it was way too sunny. The church dates back to the mid-12th century, and the stone we saw earlier was kept under the outside portico.
Church behind us, the trail is taking us around it and the castle and up through the woods. Two unexpected sights, one after the other, are awaiting us. The first is this concrete monstrosity, which I have absolutely no clue about what it actually is.
It’s a very odd-looking structure, quite tall, I’d say 15 or 20 meters tall, with three tunnels going through underneath. It’s clearly something industrial, but I have never seen something similar in my life. Plus, it’s now covered in vegetation, which makes it even harder to get a sense of what it actually is. Reminded me of Horizon Zero Dawn, if you played that game, you know what I’m talking about. The next unexpected sight was a shrine.
Very neglected, it’s quite literally falling apart, with a tarp on its roof put there just to prevent water from doing even more damage. As always, it’s dedicated to Mary, which is not unusual here since the iconography of Mary is way more presente than Jesus for some reason. There are Marys everywhere in the valleys if you start paying attention to them.
Up the forest we go, and we have finally reached Antro. If you suffer from OCD, don’t look at its bell tower with the off-centre clock face. It’s driving me nuts.
We have some time to wait here because we have booked a tour of the caves for 11 am, and we’re way too early. So we spend some time chilling in the shade of the trees with a nice view of the village. It’s all very relaxing, and there’s a small number of people who are also waiting to go see the church and the cave.
It’s now time to go, so off the path we go to reach the ticket stand. The ticket to visit the church is 8€, and there’s an app you can download that serves as a guide. But to visit the cave, you need to book a visit with a guide for 10€. On the app, you’re asked to use headphones, and yet some people were obviously blasting it on their speakers. Again, that’s society in 2026 and the main reason why I want to go live into the woods.
Up the 86 steps of the old stairs we go, and we have reached the very unique church of San Giovanni Battista (9/44) nested inside the cave. The current church got rebuilt in the mid 1500 after the quakes of the beginning of the century—like many of the 44 churches—and it’s quite unique. It’s also sometimes used as a venue for events.
The most fun part is that right behind the altar, you can see the cave unfolding. And it’s right behind the altar that the guided tour starts. Sadly, only the first 300 or so meters of the cave is accessible to the public, and the rest is only accessible if you’re a speleologist. The whole cave is quite big, some 4 or 5kms and there are apparently rooms that are bigger than the opening one, where the church is located. I’d love to visit it, but I think I’m too tall for this type of stuff.
One fun aspect of this cave is that apparently twenty-thousands years ago it was inhabited by the ursus spelaeus, the cave bear.
One less cool aspect was all the writings on the walls of the cave. Why are people so fucking obsessed with writing on everything? Also, why can’t we have nice things?
Anyway, the guided visit is done, it’s now time to get back on track since we have most of the walk still in front of us. So out the cave we go and down the stair, to then take a sharp right turn and walk below the entrance of the cave. There’s a nice view of the whole area from down here. Definitely worth visiting if you’re ever in this corner of the world for some random reason.
We’re almost 3 hours into this walk (even though we have spent most of the time either waiting or inside the cave), and it’s now time to gain some elevation since most of it is spread on this next chunk that will take us pretty much to the highest point of the walk and also the next church.
Unsurprisingly, after some twists and turns, what do we find? Another random Virgin Mary, this time in a shell.
After some more walking inside the forest, we are back on paved road for a little while. We are high enough to have a nice view of Mount Matajur, the peak that dominates the area. That is also gonna be the target of the next hike since the third chunk of this walk goes from down the valley up to that mountain. Not to the very top, but come on, there’s no way I get all the way up there, and I also don’t reach the summit. So you’ll get to see it up close soon enough.
We’re now almost at the site of the church of Santo Spirito (9/44), but before we walk up the final 50 or so meters, we need to cross path with guess what? You’re right, another Virgin Mary.
We’re roughly 4 hours into this walk, and the location of the church of Santo Spirito is perfect to take a break and eat something. I mean, just look how relaxing this place feels:
So far, this might be my favourite location, even though the church itself is probably the ugliest one. And also the youngest. The original one was built probably before the year 1000, but then everything got destroyed during bombardments in WW2 and the current building dates back to 1949. So it’s not even a century old, and it’s in rough shape already.
It’s nice to take a break and relax for a bit. It’s a lovely day, perfect weather, and there’s no rush. Plus, we have company!
Ok, lunch is done, shirt is dry, it’s mostly downhill from now on, so off we go through the forest again.
After a little while, we pass next to the ruins of the old Church of San Nicolò, which, if it wasn’t for my watch vibrating, I’d have completely missed because this thing is barely visible even if you are paying attention.
We also stumble across whatever—or whoever—this guy is. I had to take a picture and send it to my brother since that’s his name.
Through the forest, across the fields, back into the forest again, out of the forest yet again we’re now almost at the point where we can see the new location of the church of San Nicolò Vescovo (10/44). I have to say, it’s a lot easier to spot compared to the old one, which is completely covered by vegetation and in total ruin. But it’s also quite big, and I don’t know, I guess I’m more of a fan of the tiny ones hidden inside the forest. This one feels like a normal church to me.
Only one church is left, and then the final descent to the end of this hike. But first, I need to stop and take a picture of something, and by now you might have an idea of what it is.
And here we are, we have reached the location of the final church of today’s hike, the church of San Donato, hidden inside the forest, with its missing bell and its lovely appearance.
Now, fun fact: the door has a hole in it with a cover you can swipe aside. Is this a glory hole? We’ll never know.
What we do know is what’s inside it because I did peek inside that hole. What a fun experience this was!
The only thing left for us to do now is to walk down the forest, take a wrong turn because the GPS messed up, do some bushwhacking, find the correct trail again, walk some more, pass next to a bunch of other Marys—there are always more Marys—cross the Natisone once again and reach our final destination.
And here we are, arrived at the park where we left my car, some 7 hours and 16kms later. This was a very relaxing walk, it can easily be done in probably 3 and a half hours. But why rush when you can spend some time outside and enjoy nature? I did update the iCloud album with the new pictures, so if you want to see more from this walk, click that link.
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2026-04-24 19:00:00
This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Nicolas Solerieu, whose blog can be found at slrncl.com/blog.
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I’m dad, designer, cyclist, designer, texture guy – currently living in San Luis Obispo, CA. My oldest kid just learned to blow his nose. The other one is in his prime baby time. These days I day dream about bikepacking and permaculture.
Born and raised in France, I landed in California in 2016. An odd mix of work ethic and ego led me to define myself through the stuff I make: all sorts of combinations of rectangles and text boxes, mostly for screens, solely because I got good enough to get paid for it. While I'm filled with gratitude for my career, I spend a humorously uncomfortable amount of time torn between ascetic ideals and pragmatism.
While I’m not a technologist, I’m not a monk either. I’m way too fidgety. Time outdoors, family life, movement, and occasional meditation keep me sane.
I adopted this domain name in 2016 as I didn't like having my real name spelled out in the URL, it felt weird. I bought my initial domain back in 2012: nicolas-soleri.eu, I thought it was clever. SLRNCL is a concatenation of my last name and my first name without the vowels. It's hard to remember, which is great since I'm not trying to play the SEO game.
I truly started to put effort into writing in 2022. The birth of my first child probably had a lot to do with it – and getting off instagram. I couldn’t fathom the idea of being a dad with an instagram account. But I’d love for my kids to one days read the blog of their silly dad.
Self-awareness and allergy to grandiosity creates a tension between craft, skepticism, and my embodied experience which I love to put into words. The blog-therapy is (still) working. It’s eating up most of my creative ego and filling my feed.
Nowadays I use the default iOS notes app. I write whenever. I edit little.
I used to have a notes.txt file on my desktop where I was putting down all interesting nuggets, like a wine cellar, hoping for them to mature. Instead, they mostly degenerated and created a bunch of anxiety from doing nothing of it.
I breed an uncomfortably large amount of thoughts daily. Most of them are unexceptional. I cultivate poor writing hygiene because I do not want to truly get into writing. Yet, there seems to be something that keeps bringing me back to words. To tame my ego and avoid creating a generational supply of passable notes I use my blog as a graveyard.
Typos are my own, I’m working on it. With AI it now feels like a mark of authenticity. Sometimes I ask my wife to proof-read, but that is rare because we end up arguing, worth it.
Following the flow of life is what makes my creative juice flow. I often write on the toilet or in public parks while keeping an eye on my kids. I thrive in “white-space” time - time in between things. So I jot down notes when I’m out and about. I’m not a coffee shop person and I hate my home office.
My website is home cooked. It runs mostly on PHP. I still have Jquery installed but I’m slowly removing all Javascript dependencies. I'm not a great dev and prefer to stay 5 years behind trends. My website is constrained by my skills. This has kept me grounded and covered most of my needs and ambitions. I don't recommend inspecting my code, it's really not great but decently light. Building stuff is a great way to keep myself grounded in the process. I use Inter as the only font because it's nice, plain, and open source. It will default to system font if Inter isn't available. Because I don't want to import anything custom or use CDN. I'm not better than Inter (and few out there are IMO).
The site is hosted by OVH in France. I’m considering self-hosting since my house produces excess solar power.
I’d use bearblog if I was not a pretentious web designer and had to start over. I recommended it to my wife, she likes it. The simplicity and authenticity of the project is lovely. That said I do not regret the torturous process of having redesigned my website tirelessly over the last decade. The process taught me a lot about myself.
My domain name + hosting cost under 20 euros/year. I do not run ads or track anything - I don’t plan or change this ever.
That means my website has had an incredible ROI considering the career opportunities it gave me. The many people who hired me all visited my website (and told me about it). I had some rewarding connections with internet strangers. My gratitude is larger than an html file can hold, and definitely magnitude greater than what it cost me to run my website.
Money is important, and I’m a lucky bastard. I don’t have anything against people monetizing their thoughts - though I’m rarely compelled by a paywall. Digital patronage and crowdfunding seems highly relevant to get out of the social media hell realm of today. It has pitfalls, the main one being requiring mass adoption which seems highly delusional. But hope and compassion are contagious while big tech fights entropy. Social media always comes back in a different form, meanwhile, html is still there. It’s the cockroach business model.
There are so many goodies out there, one link away. Sharing is fun, side projects too. In my case it took me a decade to get my head out of my own butt and realize the cost of my own ventures. I believe a lot of us are similar to me, moving through life and accumulating stuff. Cleaning up, giving up, and passing along are necessary processes. So as a closing thought I’d suggest to sit, close your eyes and think of all your stuff. If you’re comfortable with it, great. Otherwise, spring is coming.
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2026-04-23 15:10:00
I was catching up with some tech news yesterday and every time I read one of these “I woke up with a USD 18k bill in my Cloud account” articles, I am reminded about how fucking stupid—and predatory—this whole industry can be.
The ability to set hard spending caps should be required by law. I think that’s another issue the EU should decide to tackle at some point. If I know I have a budget available, there should be an option for me to configure your service so that you don’t allow me to spend more than that. And if my product or site goes down as a result of that, it’s a choice I get to make.
But the reason why hard caps are usually not an option is obvious: companies get to make more money this way. Hurray for capitalism! The sad part is seeing allegedly smart people arguing that no, the actual reason is that it’s a complex problem to solve, and no-one has figured out how to do it yet. An excuse so pathetic that it’s not even worth getting mad about it.
There are people discussing plans to build moon bases, put servers in orbit, build digital gods, and yet setting a hard cap on billing is a complex problem to solve. Sure, I believe that.
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2026-04-22 20:35:00
In a previous post, talking about the church of San Nicolò, I wrote:
It’s part of a trail that I do want to walk that is designed to touch 44 votive churches scattered around the valleys.
I’m gonna visit that church again because yesterday I walked the first of the 10th segments of the “loop”. I’m putting it in quotes because I’m a bit annoyed by this trail, and that’s part of the reason why I never walked it fully: it’s not really a loop that touches 44 churches. It IS a loop, but if you walk it, you’ll end up skipping quite a few of the 44 since it only touches 35 churches.
In order to visit all the 44s, you also have to walk the nine alternative paths that are available. Some of them are just different routes—usually with harder climbs—but others are random detours where you leave the main loop, go in a completely different direction to visit one church that’s nowhere near the main loop and then come back through the same road you came in and carry on with the walk.
Well, I refuse to do that. So I decided to make a custom version of this thing and walk an actual loop, where I never travel twice on the same road. And yes, I’m doing this because I am a stubborn mother fucker.
I am not going to walk it continuously day after day—I have work to do and a dog I need to take care of—so I’ll likely walk these over multiple weekends, when the weather allows it. And the weather did allow us to go for a nice walk this past weekend, so we went for it.
I say we because the first segment is one of the easiest ones, and so I took my mother with me. She’s turning 65 this year, and her knees have seen better days, so it’s unlikely she’ll be able to walk most of this loop but this first one is mostly flat and so she was down to join me.
After a nice breakfast, we left my car at the end point, we then drove and parked her car near the beginning of the trail, and off we went. The loop—and this first segment—officially starts in front of the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta in Cividale, but we parked outside the town because it was more convenient. Not that it maters all that much: it’s a loop after all, and it will end there, so you’ll have a chance of seeing that part hopefully in a few months when I’m walking past it on my way to the car on the final segment of the loop.
The plan for the day was to go from Cividale to Ponteacco, where we parked my car. It’s about 12km, and it’s mostly flat. It’s a perfect way to start the loop, especially if you plan to do it continuously over 10 days.
There are quite a few trails that intersect here, including the Alpe Adria Trail that spans some 750km across three countries. Who knows, maybe one day, when I don’t have an insane dog I need to babysit, I’ll go walk that one as well.
As you might expect, given the nature of this trail, you’ll see plenty of pictures of churches and religious art. I am not a religious person—I’m not even a massive fan of religious art—but it is interesting to observe just how present it is when you start paying attention to it.
One enjoyable aspect of these trails is that they usually take you through backroads you’d have no reason to walk otherwise. Walking in general is a great way to move through space if you’re interested in absorbing more about your surroundings.
There was a group in front of us that was also hiking, but we passed them after maybe 45 minutes, and they must have gone a different direction because. Maybe they were doing the Alpe Adria Trail, who knows.
After roughly an hour, we were at what can be considered the entrance of the valleys, and we crossed over the Natisone, the river these valleys are named after. We’re gonna see it again later in the walk. Not much water in the river right now.
We stumbled on a very creepy-looking Mary on our way to church number one. Those eyes are quite something.
A few twists and turns, and here we are at the church of San Bartolomeo (1/44). Its construction dates back to the second half of the 15th century, with a first substantial renovation after the earthquakes of 1511 and 1513. There’s a wooden altar from the 17th century inside, but the light was terrible, and I didn’t manage to take a picture.
Nearby there’s also the church of Santa Maria Consolatrice as well as a monument to the fallen during World War. There are a lot of these scattered around the valleys.
Not even two hours into this walk, and we’re crossing over the Natisone again, with Mary watching over us this time around.
After 8km, we’re at the church (and monument) of San Quirino (2/44) built in 1250—on the site of a protohistoric necropolis reused in the Roman age—and subsequently renovated in 1494. The writing on the outside reads “Qui i morti vivono” (Here the dead live), and inside there’s another memorial to the fallen soldiers in both World Wars. It’s an interesting looking church because it’s quite asymmetrical, something that’s not all that common.
With San Quirino behind us, it’s time to cross the road, pass next to the main church of San Pietro al Natisone and begin the final third of our journey. Or at least, that’s what my mother was about to do. I, on the other hand, was about to take a different path because it’s here where the first of the 9 alternative paths that are available on this whole loop starts. As I said at the beginning, my goal is to make this an actual loop and so my plan was to walk to church number 3 and from there to invent a different path and rejoin my mother at the site of church number 4 to then finish the hike together.
So off we went, in her case on a lovely flat trail, while I was instead going up hill and down hill to reach the site of the church of Sant’Antonio Abate. This whole area is lovely, I’d genuinely do not mind living here. The bell tower was clearly visible as I was on my way down to Clenia, and I have to say, I quite like the style of this one. Big fan of the use of different materials.
And here we were at the church of Sant’Antonio Abate (3/44), which is quite an interesting one because it has no front since it’s attached to another building. I tried my luck taking a picture of the inside; it’s not the most amazing picture ever, but at least you can get a glimpse of the interiors. The main body of the church dates back to the 14th century, but the bell tower was rebuilt in 1921. What a youngster, just barely a century old.
But no time to rest because I now needed to fly up and down the hills that separated me from the main path since my mother was already likely waiting for me at the next church. So up we went—at a pace that was a bit too brisk for my taste—and we only stopped at the very top to take a picture of this unexpected shrine where people have hung rosaries to a tree next to this small Virgin Mary statue.
Down the forest we went, and just like that, we arrived at the site of the church of San Nicolò (4/44) built in 1498 in a lovely location up the hills. And, as planned, there’s my mother, on her phone, like a classic millennial. Kids these days...
The church is pretty standard, but I loved the funny-looking angels painted on the arches. A couple of people were having a BBQ not too far from the church and boy was there a nice smell in the air.
We’re now at the very end of the trail with only one church left to visit, 1.5km to the car, and only some 50m or so left of elevation to gain. And those 50 meters are all inside the woods before we reachd the church of Santa Dorotea (5/44), our last stop for the day. Not the most inspiring church, I have to say, but I quite liked the top of the bell tower.
The only thing left for us to do now was to go down the old stone stairs that would take us to Ponteacco, which is where we left my car earlier in the day.
And that was it, the first of the 10 segments of this loop had been walked. 5 of the 44 churches have been visited, and I very much look forward to a more challenging walk, hopefully this upcoming weekend. There’s a chance I might have company again; we’ll see.
Lastly I'm gonna leave you with two links. The first is to the hike recap generated by my watch, if you want to get a better idea of where we walked. And the second is a link to the public iCloud album I created with all the pictures I took with my phone as I was walking.
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