Day 11 - Campanelle to Bocca di Verdi

This was another day where we elected to follow the high level route, over Monte Renosu, following cairned paths. The climb to the summit took about 2 hours but didn't feel so bad, we stopped and admired the Lac de Bastani on the way. During the last steep section I took one of my intentional wrong turns thinking I'd spotted an easier route to the top and had to do a bit of unnecessary scrambling, suffering a grazed hip from trying to squeeze through a gap that was too small. More fool me, as Jack would probably say.

The summit had amazing panoramic views and it was a clear day. As we began to walk along the ridge we came across a shepherd standing on a pinnacle, whistling and calling to his sheep with an extraordinary variety of noises. 

Over the next section we got a bit lost. We'd expected this as we were meant to be switching from one cairned path to a new one, but the problem was that there were cairns in pretty much every direction. We stopped for a long time to discuss the map, debating more over whether we needed to know where we were before preceding along the ridge than over where we were. The terrain was making things difficult both in terms of walking and obscuring our view, but once we'd managed to get back onto flatter ground everything got easier again. On the descent we passed through an area of springy grass and water holes or pozzines which was very pretty.

We stopped for the night at the Relais San Petru di Verdi, a bar-restaurant with a huge log fire and barbeque. There were also semi-wild pigs grazing round the campsite and four hot showers! Most people who'd been with us at Campanelle had walked the low level route and so carried on to the Refuge de Prati, however Martin had now caught up with us, having walked both low level routes from Vizzavona in one day. We had dinner in the restaurant which was wonderful, though less so for Jack who's vegetarian main option consisted of a large pile of peas in place of the pork chop!