After our friend Kaye dropped us back to the Castle in Bolsena, we wandered down through the town, bought some supplies and headed out into the lakeside forests. It was not long before we me Anne, our French companion pilgrim, who was on the road in front of us. We walked together for a while and shared our respective morning teas on the trail.
Around a corner we saw several men with powerful rifles, reflective jackets and dogs, planting what were obviously orange warning flags around the perimeter of a forest area. Several more corners and lots more men, dogs and some serious hunting gear. A cordon of men lined up across a field facing a forest, it looked like a battle scene. They had jackets badged what we translated as the Bolsena Boar Hunting Society. This also made sense of the many posters we had seen taped to trees over the last day or so, indicating something to do with wild boars, we hadn't put together the fact that it was a hunt and it was on right now and we were walking through the territory. Two or three times over the next hour or so we heard volleys of rifle fire and baying of hounds. The forest was stunningly beautiful, but we were rather glad to leave the wilds and regain farming country closer to Montifiascone.
We arrived in good time and met Kaye, Sue and Claudio for coffee. It was a big favour to us to allow us a day of walking without packs. We collected them and headed to the Monastery where we were staying for the night.
Kaye had mentioned a good restaurant just nearby called Mamma e Pappa, we thought it would be fun to go there. A great host, who treated us to tasty bits of local cheese, salami, bruschetta with 'new oil', while our meals were prepared. He had asked us if we wanted two courses, to which we had said 'yes', as long as it was finished by 9.00pm when the monastery gates closed. 'Tranquile', he said 'be at peace', and sure enough we were safely inside by 8.50, and very well fed on wonderful local food.
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