The clouds and I

Often when I wake up in the middle of the night I don’t always know where I am. While the name of the place isn’t that much of a big deal, as most places don’t even have a name, it’s by far more interesting that I don’t remember how it looks like outside my tent. So it happened a few nights ago. I chose a spot with mountains to my left and to my right, ahead of my was a beautiful view into a valley and behind me was flat meadow. The view into the valley was a long way down and it was a nice downward curve. That already gave me the option to either feel like the little prince on a tiny planet or like a giant on earth. As it was very windy and cold I didn’t bother to spend too much time enjoying this scenery while there was still light and crawled into my sleeping bag inside my tent. Being exhausted from the day I soon fell asleep. A few hours later, it was already dark and I assumed middle of the night, I woke up to contribute to waters’ eternal cycle. It was still very windy outside when I opened my tent and stepped outside. I had completely forgotten where I was and was fully surprised to see majestic mountains to both sides of me, the long, open meadow around me leading into the valley in front of me. The night-sky revealed cloud-formation on two levels. The upper lever was occupied by slow-moving huge clouds while the lower lever where smaller scattered clouds flying by with high speed. A few open spots offered a view to the almost full moon and the stars and their ambient light added just perfectly to the overwhelming feeling. There I was, standing puzzled and speechless looking at the mind-blowing scenery incapable of grasping the input my body was receiving. From one moment to the next I zoomed out, watched myself from above as I was flying with the clouds. This feeling of freedom is beyond all meanings of words. But after an unmeasured time-span I had to return. I walked back to my tent, cold, looking forward to my sleeping bag; I never felt so small.

Time flies

Since we left Scapoli 12 days ago quite a lot has happened. First we got disappointed by not finding any trailmarks and still being on trails which are not always fun to hike on, due to thorns, bushes or no trail at all. But finally, starting around Massa D’Albe our trail is finally signed and the trail mostly hikeable with fun. We have had spring-like weather, no rain and, of course, beautiful scenery. The hospitality is incredible. We keep meeting nice people every day and often it seems they become even nicer every day, where we really don’t know how this can be…

Besides the usual story it happened that J. and I got separated last week and walked by ourselves for a few days. (I hope J. writes an article about that;-)). Today we reunited again in the town of Posta where I have taken a zero-day. I’ve really enjoyed my time alone and met nice and beautiful people but I’m also happy to have J. around again. We made the plan for the next 10 days and decided to go to Rome for a day or two before we finally meet our principessa Alice (find her story here) again.

As the next days are going to be exciting, we may have stories to tell. So stay tuned, check out our pics and vids here and here or just feel free to look at our stats and follow our trail here.

Campania (Part III)

It’s February 27th and we left Campania for good today and will arrive in Scapoli tomorrow; we both are very excited about that. It feels like we achieved another milestone after being in Campania for over 400 km. We hope to find continous trailmarks from there on snd when we look on the map , now that we finished Campania, it looks like not so close to Sicily any more. Yes, we know, hard facts say that we have already hiked over 1.400 km but often it doesn’t look like much on the map…

  • So yes, we both are very excited about
    • leaving Campania and
    • reaching Scapoli tomorrow, which by the way is ca. 50 % of Italy

    If you want to see pics and vids you find them here and here.

    All statistics to our hike are to be found here.