5 down, 39 more to go

In a previous post, talking about the church of San Nicolò, I wrote: It’s part of a trail that I do want to walk that is designed to touch 44 votive churches scattered around the valleys. I’m gonna visit that church again because yesterday I walked the first of the 10th segments of the “loop”. I’m putting it in quotes because I’m a bit annoyed by this trail, and that’s part of the reason why I never walked it fully: it’s not really a loop that touches 44 churches. It IS a loop, but if you walk it, you’ll end up skipping quite a few of the 44 since it only touches 35 churches. In order to visit all the 44s, you also have to walk the nine alternative paths that are available. Some of them are just different routes—usually with harder climbs—but others are random detours where you leave the main loop, go in a completely different direction to visit one church that’s nowhere near the main loop and then come back through the same road you came in and carry on with the walk. Well, I refuse…