The kiwi farmers
Rome to San Felice Circeo, 27th - 28th April
In the end I spent five nights in Rome, from Tuesday afternoon to Sunday morning. I did a few of the big sights: the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, and Vatican City during the Pope's lying-in-state. It really feels like a city where you can turn a corner and find an ancient ruin, and I loved that feeling but hated the tourist crowds. I spent my first two nights in a very central Airbnb and my latter three nights with a Warmshowers host in the suburbs, which Clem had originally arranged for herself and managed to get me invited to.
A location so suburban it was halfway to IKEA, even there there were ruins: a big green park crossed by Roman aqueducts. The hosts were a couple and a cat and I loved all three of them. One was originally from Naples and full of beautiful chaotic energy, giving me food tips, teaching me vulgar Neapolitan expressions, and correcting my stretching techniques (he's a physiotherapist). The other was an activist involved in the local cycling community, who showed me and Clem the local "ciclofficina popolare", or "people's bike workshop", run by volunteers in a squat. She also brought us along to a local march for Liberation Day, held every 25th of April to celebrate Italy's liberation from Fascism in 1945. I've never seen this in another country and it was very energising to see so many people marching in celebration and solidarity. I'm curious to see what May Day will be like, too, and I'm a little sad that I missed Critical Mass Rome (which coincided with Liberation Day) in favour of a quiet dinner.
Still, rest is important too, and I'm happy to have had such a long time in Rome. Clem and I left together on Sunday, with Paul having sped off to Naples after three days in Rome. He doesn't like big cities much and I think he feels an internal drive to keep moving towards Asia, but I hope our paths somehow cross again despite our differing speeds. For now, Clem and I are still riding together but it seems likely we'll split before Naples. She'd prefer to go quickly along what we've heard is a less interesting section, but I'm not in a hurry because I've received some exciting news from home: my family are going to visit me! They're coming to Naples on the May bank holiday weekend, so I'm trying to time my arrival to match.
Leaving Rome, we followed the ancient Via Appia road on a section which is now a park. After the exurban awfulness that marked our entry to the city it was nice to have car-free path out, and I could believe that some of the bigger, bumpier stones were the original Roman ones. The sky couldn't seem to make up its mind that morning: sunny skies turned into a downpour and then back to sunny skies, and we nervously kept an eye on the forecast for storms.
In the evening, our storm fears were realised. We'd been planning to wild camp, but with rain starting to come down on us while still in a populated area, Clem suggested that we knock on a door and ask for somewhere to put our tents up under shelter. I'd never done this before, but she'd had some experience with asking people in the street and I was quite curious to see this method for myself. I was glad to be with her, both because by myself I'd shy about disturbing people and because as a woman she'd likely get a better reception. She'd spotted a house with a bicycle out front and approached it, with me trailing behind and providing Italian language help. It turned out that the bicycle belonged to a Pakistani man who was working for the house's residents, and I was able to use my Hindi to communicate with him more smoothly while a woman who'd been standing in the doorway went to fetch her husband after we asked to stay.
The couple were initially confused and probably sceptical of us, but gradually offered us more hospitality. At first, we were shown a large garage-style space where we could pitch our tents (no paving - the ground was tent peg–friendly dirt), and a disused mostly functional second bathroom, which we happily and graciously thanked them for. Safe from the rain! Then they mentioned some mattresses, which we explained we didn't need as we had camping equipment, but they insisted on showing us. After that came bedframes and blankets set up in their storeroom (moving us out of the garage), which we were eventually pushed to graciously accept. Then, an offer of food - we once again thanked them for their generosity but told them we had our own, and once again gave in when they insisted on us joining them. Clem had some experience with this process and brought some of our food to share with them as well, something I'll definitely copy if I end up in this situation again. I think our initial refusal of hospitality probably contributed to their willingness to give it, too, although it led to some silly situations. After showing us the nice bathroom and telling us to take a shower, they insisted on me using their hairdryer even though I hadn't washed my hair. It's easier to just go along with it and I tried not to take it as style insult.
Sitting down together for dinner is sacred with Italians, and they were clearly curious to hear our story and why we ended up knocking on their door. I say "they", but nearly all of our conversation was with the husband. It was a stereotypically patriarchial household, with the wife doing all the cooking and very little of the talking, or even eating her own food while cooking. It turned out that she was from Punjab, so I was able to communicate with her more easily using Hindi. This way, we all ended up roughly able to communicate using Italian, Hindi, and English, with me and the wife sometimes acting as translators.
Chatting with them both and seeing the unvarnished inside of their house was quite interesting. They had boxes everywhere and somehow the interior vibe reminded me a bit of Delhi, especially in the kitchen. We learned that they grew kiwis, had a son at school in Paris, and got many recommendations for where we should visit on our way to Naples (every seaside town was "bellissimo"). We also heard about some of their travels: Istanbul, Tunisia, and India. Even the husband's mother had been to India, although apparently the food was too spicy for her. Communication was slow and error prone as we tried to understand the husband's Italian, but was helped by his charades skills and sometimes the wife's Punjabi translations. We drank white wine from plastic cups poured out of a litre Coke bottle and listened to the couple trying to convince workers to come to the farm the next morning. Very polite and generous to us, the husband was quite rude on the phone, as though insulted by the workers not choosing to take an early morning shift on short notice. The wife helped by translating to Punjabi - all the workers seemed to be Punjabis and the husband didn't speak any. When he noticed me speaking to his wife in Hindi, he asked me (in Italian) "oh, you speak Indian?". There is, of course, no language called "Indian" and I was dismayed to realise that he didn't take enough of an interest in his wife's culture to know this.
After dinner they had some work to do and we offered to help, but as it turned out they didn't really need it. The work was to weigh several jars of pollen and sift the pollen to remove small plant fluff. Clearly valuable stuff, they were treating it very delicately and trying not to lose any precious yellow dust. It was simultaneously extremely unscientific and also impressively engineered, using a plastic box with a hole in the side to provide a sealed environment for sifting. Fun though it was to observe, both me and Clem are allergic to pollen and we excused ourselves after an hour when it became impossible to ignore.
The couple then began the next stage of their increasing hospitality, insisting that we stay in a proper bedroom instead of their box-filled storeroom. We put up a serious fight on this one, telling them that the storeroom was amazing and great and perfect in as many ways we could remember the Italian for, but they didn't like the idea of us sleeping in the dusty storeroom and the husband eventually physically dragged me to the bedroom. At that point it seemed like they were probably not just being polite and we finally caved in. It was a bit funny that the idea of us staying in the storeroom was so offensive at that point when earlier they'd been quite happy with it, but it makes sense that they got more comfortable with us after having dinner together.
We left early in the morning, not wanting to impose on them further for breakfast or (although unlikely) be pressed into working on the farm. Clem had been reading some articles about exploitation of Punjabi workers in this area, Aprilia, and was a bit uncomfortable spending more time with the farmers. I'd enjoyed the novel experience but it was pretty tiring so I definitely wanted to wild camp the next night and not be social. Our route that day took us along some quiet Mediterranean coastal towns. My first seaside cycling of the trip! The last time I'd seen the sea was the English Channel, and this was miles better: big blue sea and a clear sunny sky. It was a relaxing ride through quiet seaside towns including the fascist propaganda town of Sabaudia, reclaimed from marshland and built in a "rationalist" style. I also had a chat with a group of Punjabi women starting their lunch break (with Indian tiffin boxes) on a carrot farm. One woman, who told me that she liked her job, had been working there for twenty years. I find it hard to imagine being happy working on a carrot farm every day but I think she really was.
In the afternoon, we reached a town we'd heard from several people was beautiful: San Felice Circeo. It's a town on the side of Mount Circeo, which juts out onto the sea, and it was indeed gorgeous. The mountain had been rising on the horizon all day and arriving at the base felt like a special moment. When in a beautiful place, I like to spend some time there rather than cycling straight through, and Clem and I stopped for lunch and made the trek uphill towards the historic town centre for some views of the bay. Deciding to camp on the hillside, we had a relaxed evening waiting until sunset before finding a brilliantly flat and convenient spot to wild camp. No strangers to meet, no hospitality to refuse and then graciously accept - I was very happy for us to sleep quietly in the woods on the beautiful mountain.
