Chuck's News: Sunday, November 16, 2025 - “The Falls” - Arrone to Marmore - 6.28 miles point to point (ptp), 7.28 miles total

Italy is old. The buildings, the infrastructure, the art. We’ve seen stuff from as far back as 300 b.c. up to the present. St. Francis, whose route we are following, was born in 1181 or 1182 and died 46 years later. This means many of his churches, buildings and artifacts (relics) are 800 years old. In the small towns our route leads us through we see few younger people and almost no children. We hope it is because they are in school. The buildings are old and their occupants are old. Most of these towns we walk through are very quaint, but they are also nearly vacant. We rarely see any activity or lights on in the upper floor apartments. Same with the churches. They are hundreds of years old and have lost their vibrancy. Few people attend so there is not enough capital, both financial as well as man power to maintain them, and it shows.

The apartment we rented in Assisi was in a thousand year old stone building, yet the inside was modern and very comfortable. Enough people come to Assisi that money flows and renovations can occur. However, the rest of the small towns do not have the foot traffic from tourists to finance expensive renovations. All the other rooms we have rented in old buildings were dated. Some have been funk-a-fied to make them cute but they are still old feeling. What does the future hold for these little towns? It appears the younger generations don’t want to live in them. We find it sad and a little distressing.

We awoke in our spartan room at our normal 4:00am but forced ourselves to stay in bed with eyes closed until 6:00am. I stayed in bed and wrote my blog while Sally did her morning routine. We had a short day ahead of us, about 4 miles to reach the base of the Cascata.

A quick history lesson:

About 300bc the Romans wanted to drain a swamp to get rid of malaria in the area so they dug a canal to drain a swamp. The water from the swamp poured over a 600’ tall cliff creating the largest manmade waterfall in the world. Over the past 2000 years it has been modified many times. In the last century they diverted all the water through turbines to generate electricity, but twice a day (12:00pm and 3:00pm) they diverted all the water back over the waterfall for an hour for the public to enjoy. The entire falls area is now enclosed within a park with trails and foot bridges everywhere to allow the public to get up close to this man controlled monster waterfall called the Cascata.

We knew we didn’t need to be to the waterfall until noon, so we kicked back a bit today. We crossed the highway and had pastries and a soda for breakfast, courtesy of Gina. Once finished, we packed up and headed out the door. At the bottom of the stairs we remembered we hadn’t taken any photos of the inside. I ran back up and snapped a few, the key being still stuck in the door, allowing easy entry. Down I came and Sally asked if I had taken a photo of the key in the door. Back up I went for that photo. Back down, we made it about 30 steps when Sally realized we had not taped her feet. Back up the stairs. 10 minutes later we descended the stairs for the final time and got on the route.

The route was total flat, a continuation of yesterday’s walk. We could see the cliffs ahead that marked where the waterfall was. About 10:00 we entered the parking lot for people visiting the falls and walked to the ticket office. €12 entry fee unless you are a pilgrim in which case it is free.

We walked on the sidewalk to the viewing area and had an hour and a half to kill. We had another delicious lunch utilizing our Donar Kebab meat and veggies on bread, chips and a soda. People watching filled in the remaining minutes. Quite a crowd had gathered. Every 15 minutes starting at 11:00 they blasted a loud horn and announced in very loud Italian something we couldn’t understand but we surmised it was something like, “Hey!! Get out of the dry riverbeds and behind the fences. A crap ton of water is about to come roaring down.”

Exactly at noon the spindly waterfall that had been dripping over the lip started to grow into a raging torrent. It took about 15 minutes to get to full strength, plummeting over the lip and free falling a couple hundred feet and then crashing down the lower slope and cliffs to the river bed at the bottom. It was an impressive show of force.

We enjoyed it for about 20 minutes and thought we should get on our way. The funny thing is, our route went straight up over this cliff, not more than a hundred yards to the right of the falls. We found the bridge to cross the roaring river and started up, using the GPS track on my phone to guide us through the labyrinth of trails in the park. We ended up on the tourist trails that wove through the channels of the river, but didn’t lead us to the top of the falls. We walked back down, reviewed the map again and found the correct route onto trail #1. Up we went. To call it a trail is to mischaracterize it. It was a set of stairs rising 600’ from the base of the falls to the top. Sure it wove around rock formations, trees and such, but it was either raised metal stairs on scaffolding or wooden stairs imbedded in the dirt. So cool!! Like climbing the stairs to the observation deck on the Space Needle.

We topped out about 45 minutes after we began and walked the two blocks to our apartment. We had the code to the key lockbox to get in. What a great place. An old building nicely restored, designed, well furnished and decorated. $159 for two nights. Good job Sally! Your tireless research pays off.

It’s Sunday. Everything closed? Only two small grocers in town and one is open. She also serves pizza and the reviews were good. We walked the 8 minutes to her store. Newer building. Beautiful inside. Owner has an eye for color, arrangement and decoration. We ordered a pizza. She said she could have it made in 10 minutes and disappeared into the back. We gathered the food we needed from her shelves and helped ourselves to a soda. Our pizza came out. Wow!! It was a rectangle about 10” by 20”. Enough for tonight’s dinner and the next two day’s lunches.

We had talked about walking to the top of the falls, just five minutes away, to see the 3:00 rushing of the water, but we didn’t. We were content to rest in our room for the remainder of the afternoon. It has been 10 straight days on the move and we are both wearing down. We set a new record today. We were in bed by 5:30pm. Not asleep, but definitely horizontal. Originally, tomorrow was a rest day, but in trying to dodge the coming rains we decided to take the train to Rieti, a bus to Poggio Moiano and walk back to San Lorenzo and bus and train back to here in Marmore. A busy day ahead.