First: a thank you to everyone who writes reactions to my logs! I don't reply to all of them, but I do like getting them, so thank you.
Originally, I had planned to go to Locarno and take two days off there, to see Locarno and (via a train journey) Lugano. But I've already seen them, so I can now pass Locarno by completely, which means straightish south to Italy.

I left the hotel/Airbnb at 9.00, after having woken up at 5.30 and being unable to fall asleep again due to the cars right underneath the window.
The pain in my back has partially shifted to my hip, but it seems to be getting better. However, today would be another short distance day.
I allowed some up and down forest paths in my route today (just roads is getting pretty boring) and that seemed to be going okay. I followed Luisa's advice and put my pack a little higher on my back, and it does indeed seem to work a little better (thank you! I couldn't find the time this time around but before my next trip I'll definitely ask Camino Comfort for a loaded-backpack fitting session again).
The forests here are more like parks, with a bit of up and down in them. There even was a Monte Verità of 332m high, which felt rather Dutch to me until I realised that monte and montagna are two different things. After that came a 'sentiero Romano', which was more a staircase Romano and definitely wasn't from Roman times.
Shortly after that, I took a lunch break, there was a bench with a sort of carport next to it, which I planned to use in case of rain as the sky looked threatening. I ended up sitting under the carport for most of an hour and a half, it only started raining after an hour but there were thunderstorms all around the lake (I'm close to Lago Maggiore here), and echoes of the thunder running around even more, so I just didn't trust it. Around 14.00 all of the thunder had moved away from where I was going, and the rain stopped again, so it was time to move on.
However, my hip was rather unhappy, so I decided to skip the next two 'peaks' in my route and take a more level option. That did mean taking a lot of stairs down (although that was mostly due to the sloping path being closed for maintenance), and it also meant following the big road for most of the remainder of the day. That was fine, it did have a sidewalk, I had a very good view of the lake most of the time, and it had a lot of tourist infrastructure, so no lack of water, public toilets or ice cream.

I reached Italy before 17.00. I passed an actual customs station, the officers looked at me but said no more than buongiorno. The problem was that as soon as I was in Italy, the sidewalk vanished. And there weren't any more or less parallel roads either. The result of this was walking on the road for a long time. Not exactly what I had in mind for crossing the last border on my trip; but the next crossing is at over 1900m and not exactly close by horizontally either. So once I was in this situation, the only way out was to go on.
Nevertheless: I made it to Italy! The last country on my journey to Rome, the last border crossing, and a very good milestone even if it doesn't look as pretty as I would have liked. It made me feel happy and proud. I crossed the Alps! I walked all the way from the Netherlands to Italy!

The road did not improve, once I reached habitation I took a few overpasses that were safer, but they were rare. I found a trail with a signpost that seemed a good idea; but if I'd known how far it would climb I might have reconsidered. It saved me less than 10 minutes of road and took over 20, and I wanted to avoid more climbing as I wanted to spare my hip any extra descending.

But I made it, no (near) accidents, and now I'm in Cannobio on the shore of Lago Maggiore. I had dinner on the beach, and once it got dark, I could watch bats.

Also, I have a theory. I still get out of breath really quickly when climbing, and I can do hardly any climbing at all without having to take micro-breaks. At first I thought, well, I'm just not in shape yet. But it didn't get better. This is part of why all those days in the mountains took me so long, because I kept having to pause to catch my breath.
But after 3 weeks and a somewhat ridiculous 13145m of climbing, you'd say I'm in shape, right? But it did not get better. I suspect my lungs of not having recovered 100% from the covid infection I had this spring. If I have a somewhat reduced lung capacity because of that, it could explain the trouble I have with climbing. It would also be bad timing to have that when crossing the Alps, but I made it anyway :-)

Geschreven door Jewaontheroad