The lake tour and a soccer festival

Today I do not meet my pilgrim-friend from yesterday. He wanted to go to Ivrea too, but that probably did not work out. Anyway, yesterday I had a really excellent pizza – truly amazing food. It‘s quite a while since I enjoyed quality like that. Today I‘m off to Viverone. The distance is approximately 25 kilometers. From the very start I feel that my right foot is not okay. In spite of that feeling, I walk on. Out of town and into the countryside – or rather right into mosquito-paradise. The air is really humid, and the insects are a bloody nuisance. In spite of my African mosquito wonder-spray this is a fight among equals.

A really beautiful hiking tour

Then I arrive at a lake, the Lago di Campagna, which is beautifully situated in the forest. There are resting places and the families push and shove around the first row. It is not quite clear to me why, because it is not so easy to deal with this mosquito plague. I have some doubts about our boss up there in heaven. What was he thinking about when he invented mosquitoes for Adam and Eve.

It happened …

A while later I realize that I have developed a serious problem on my right foot – I can only hope that it is really only a blister and nothing more. I have experience with worse conditions and I don’t want to experience that anymore. With blisters I have no experience so far, which is actually strange. All the pilgrims talk about it and I have never had anything like it on thousands of kilometers. So I limp on. In Palazzo Canavese I am stopped by locals. They have seen how I walk past, suffering. They are just preparing for their beer- soccer festival and invite me for a drink to pep me up for the next kilometers. Really nice people here, they have pity on people who voluntarily take on the hardships of pilgrimage.

Shortcuts are not worth it

In the end I get lost and take an alternative route. This finally ends with me wobbling the last few kilometers on the main road, which seems endless to me. In the end I am rewarded with a great hotel, located directly at the Lago di Viverone. One hundred meters further on there is a beach bar with live broadcasts of the soccer world championship. And that is important to me today: Switzerland – Brazil. That saved my day.