World Adventure

The dream is to walk in Tuscany. They reality is that it is hot and humid. Still we decide to ignore the reality of the situation and press on. Lonely planet have a walk to follow and we as their disciples believe in them. Train to Certaldo. My mistake was to leave the a certain well known American's Travel writer's Italy book in view and next the comment from the American  near us is "great book" my well thought out response was "no it is not but you guys seem to follow it like a bible". I am grumpy - lack of sleeps and a bottle of red the night before does that  to me. He engages no further and that relieves me of the need for any more highbrow comments.
So off at Certaldo. Nice looking walled town but we do not go as we have a walk to start. Our bible - the lonely planet instantly confuses us and I suspect that they have never actually been on the walk that they describe. Lets face it lonely planet has never been the same since he wheelers sold it - Newcastle in the 10 ten cities of the world -a typo did they forget a zero or two??? Vanessa and I regroup and find a map in the city square. Lonely planet want us to walk a maze and the map says just follow the street. We take the latter. I find the toughest part to starting a walk is actually finding the path itself.
We find that the walk is actually on a road. Italian drivers believe roads are for driving not walking. We are in for an interesting day. It doesn't take long on the uphill climb to turn into balls of sweat (note Vanessa perspires not sweats - she's a lady).
Ok it is a walk in Tuscany. Olive groves. Grape vines with bunches of purple grapes ready for harvest. We harvest a couple on the way. There are big old churches, monasteries and villas along the way but the heat makes it a difficult walk. We stop under the shade of a birch tree with great views and a silhouette of the towers of San Gimignano on a hill in the distance.
We continue along finding some ambiguous directions in the lonely planet relating ro walking though somebodies front yard then backtracking to the somebody who was sitting on a chair outside watching with amusement and asking the way in broken italian.
The walk  becomes tedious towards the end but this is broken up by a snake sighting . It is hot and the 13km seems to have turned into 20km by the time we get to  San Gimignano. We walk through the town to a tabachi shop and purchase bus tickets then walk through the rest of the town and head to the bus stop without exploring a place that we have already explored on a previous visit. The queues for gelato  along the way are as long as ever and we still have no desire to stop.
We catch the bus to poggibonsi then train back to Florence. We still have no idea where the coop supermarket with signs pointing towards the train station is located.