St. Ulrich to Trieste, Day 11 - Cesclans to Venzone to Gemona

Wednesday July 1, Cesclans to Venzone to Gemona

Beware of falling hexagons.

With Friuli still under the heat dome, I shortened and flattened our route to Venzone. We agreed to reassess the temperature once we arrived, and we'd decide whether to walk or take mass transit to Gemona. 

Cesclans sits stop a ridge. We had a nice view looking back at Pieve di Santo Stefano on our way down.

After the initial descent, we followed the Tagliamento Ciclovia adjacent to the riverbed the rest of the way to Venzone.

The trail passed underneath the earthquake-reinforced freeway that was heading toward Taravisio and then Austria. We were only about 50km from Austria and 20km from Slovenia as the crow flies.

S paused to put a bandage on a developing blister. I had to pause to do the same a little further down the trail. We had hiked a week in boots with nary a blister, but both succumbed in sneakers. Maybe it was heat-related. (If you're wondering why I didn't put on a bandage during the fifteen minutes it took S to do so, you might also wonder how it could take him fifteen minutes and take me only three.) 

Almost there...

For the entire walk to Venzone, the Tagliamento had ever widening swaths of water.

Venzone began as a Celtic settlement ca. 500 BCE. After Charlemagne captured the kingdom of Lombardy in 774 CE, it became a fortified settlement of the Holy Roman Empire. The cathedral dates from the 1250s.

There are millennia of documented history to Venzone, but the main historical focus for us was on the earthquakes on May 6 and September 11-15, 1976, which destroyed most of the town. Almost everything we saw had been painstakingly rebuilt stone by stone. See  http://www.venzoneturismo.it/en/visit-venzone/earthquake-1976/ for before and after images of the devastation. The earthquakes impacted much of Friuli. Some places, like Venzone, rebuilt the old structures; others, like Villa Santina and Gemona, are largely newly built.

The museum is off camera just to the left...

We also spent some time visiting the cathdral.

The rebuilt Duomo di Sant'Andrea

Eve with fig leaf

Herein lie Roman mummies.

We didn't pay to see them up close, but S read the poster. The mummies were discovered in tombs beneath the cathedral in the 1600s, during renovations after another earthquake.  

Some post-earthquake cracks remain in the exterior walls of the cathedral.

One of the many town gates

We had a very pretty lunch near the cathedral. Lots of farm-to-table dining in Friuli.

Venzone restored most of its buildings stone by stone after the 1976 earthquakes, but left this church in its post-earthquake state as a reminder of the devastation.

Temps were in the mid-90s. We decided not to repeat our mistake of the previous day, so we walked to the train station and sat in the shade for an hour and a half to wait for a train to Gemona--a 6-mile, five-minute, air-conditioned ride to a town even hotter than Venzone.

Our hotel was a short walk from the train station, and we actually squealed with delight when we entered our room and learned it was AIR CONDITIONED.

Like Villa Santina and Tolmezzo, Gemona also had gnomes.

Our evening plan was to walk to Gemona's rebuilt castle and cathedral, but clouds had rolled in, and the wind was strong. When we stopped at a grocery store and saw dust blowing up from the riverbed, we decided to skip the walk. Weather forecasts indicated the heat dome was finally ending.

Ta da! 8.3 of the day's 11 miles, 200' up, 600' down. Bike lanes are pretty flat...