We had breakfast at 8am, and caught the 9:15am bus back into Cividale. While we were waiting there were numerous cars heading for Cividale to spectate at the race, including a convoy of twelve Ferraris.
We had a stroll around the old part of the town, then went to visit the Lombard chapel. It dates from the 8th century (possibly later) and has a number of stuccoes and statues from the 11th or 12th century. It’s now surrounded by a later church and nunnery. The Lombards are believed to be an itinerant tribe that travelled from Scandinavia, before settling in the area (the Long Beards).
Having done our cultural bit, we started on today’s walk. The first part was closed due to the race and we therefore walked out of town on the main road; pavement at first, but then we had to dodge cars by getting onto the narrow grass verge. We had a couple of kms of this, and then turned onto a country lane. This led through numerous vineyards. Most had been picked, but there were others still to be harvested. The path led us through woods which was nice as it was extremely hot. We stopped for a break before another stretch of road-walking. This soon took us to another short section of path through woods, before we were back on tarmac again. This lasted a couple of kilometres, before we had an extremely steep climb up to the end of the stage, back in Slovenia. Our apartment is about 400m along a track from the restaurant; the sunset should be good again!
