Day 53 Walking back

In about 1913, a young Italian man called Guerinno left his small farming village of Tovo, near the railway town of Tirano, in a deep valley, which led up into the Italian Alps. When he set out he began the adventure of his life. That adventure included a trip to Australia, serving with the Australians at the western front in WW1, trying to discover gold in California, returning to Italy to find a wife, to be married and to have a daughter, then eventually returning to Australia to become a miner in Broken Hill. Later he would bring his wife and daughter to Australia, and then have an Australian born son. Sadly Guerinno died in an accident at an early age on his orchard in Eastwood, NSW. The son, known as John, who died in 2006, was Richard’s father. So Tovo was always going to be a place we wanted to explore on Borntorun 2008.

On the day that we decided to go we had the worst weather in terms of rain since our trip began. The journey took about 4.5 hours; a ferry to Como, a train to Milan, another train to Tirano and finally a local bus to the small village of Tovo di St Agata. What we discovered was very special! The town as we expected, was very small. We enjoyed a cappuccino at the only café. There was a pub, a school and not much else. The houses were quaint, well loved and seemed to be rich in history. Many were surrounded by magnificent vegetable gardens. The church stood at the centre of the village (interestingly with a poster on the door advertising Sydney’s World Catholic Youth Day Celebrations). The valley, though hidden by clouds, was picturesque. Village after village climbed up the valley each with a church and belltower at the centre. We loved standing on a hill outside the village and listening to the bells ring out, down the valley, at midday. The river, fed by the snowmelt from the Alps flowed swiftly and powerfully through the valley where grapes and apples grew like weeds.

As the rain tumbled down we found a newish looking public noticeboard, which displayed a map of local walks and bike rides. We saw that there was a public walkway from Tovo back to Tirano, we guessed the distance to be about 8kms. Despite the persistent downpour we looked at each other and said, “Let’s do it!”.
We found the beginning of the track quite easily and after enjoying a wide asphalt path for a couple of kilometres we came to a road barricade, which we realised, meant that the track was not finished. Unperturbed we followed a foot worn track around the roadblock, which led us along the very edge of the raging mountain stream. After crossing a bridge, the track got narrower and narrower until the track was barely wide enough for a goat. All of a sudden our greatest fears were realised when the track literally came to a dead end – the river! We backtracked a little – found a different path and continued on past a huge and impressive dam to finally arrive at the township of Tirano. We were sure that we had walked more than 8 kms, and even though the whole journey had been in the pouring rain our Gortex jackets had kept out upper bodies dry. We arrived at the station just in time to catch the train home.

We wondered how Geurinno had travelled from Tovo to Tirano when he left on the train bound for Genova at the beginning of last century. In the period before buses maybe he too had walked along a track beside the river from his village. Years later, before he was married, his son John had visited Tovo as well. Maybe he also had walked the path his father had trod.

When you spend your life explaining a weird sounding surname like Quadrio it was comforting to see the name in print on signs around the area as if it was as normal as Smith or Jones.