No rain, easy walking with with not too much exposure to large roads and finally goodbye to the mountains. Our entry into Rivoli, a suburn of Turin, is less comfortable. A long section on a very busy road and then a difficult passage down narrow cobbled streets that were not built for cars, and still less for cars and horses. Nellie and I are constantly squeezing ourselves into insufficient spaces and progress is slow, but it is not all bad. The repeated, unadulterated and entirely genuine interest of the people who stop us to admire Nellie, ask us where we are going and coo over Flea, lifts our flagging spirits. Then, just when the tiredness is really being to set in and Nellie is letting us know that she has had enough, cashiers from a small supermarket bring out apples and five minutes later a customer emerges with a kilo of carrots.
Our night is less comfortable, because grass and horse-appropriate space is hard to find. After some hopeless searching, we take the only small lane we can find and find a patch of grass hidden behind a few houses. We camp illegally, but if anyone sees us he or she says nothing. Our abiding memories of the night will be the encessant city-noise – how do people live with it? And Nellie's silhouette as she stares over the vast expanse of city lights.
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