Foligno to Spoleto.
In the very height of the midday we left Foligno and took the road to Spoleto. It is a fine broad road, passing along the site of the old Flaminian Way, grand, dusty, white, with a feeling that Rome is at the end of it, and Umbria but a little land to be passed quickly by. As we trundled along in our clumsy landau dragged by a pair of miserable horses, we thought of all the popes, the emperors and legions, who, going south or northwards, had passed in this direction. The dust flew up and almost choked us; it was the week of the wild roses, and the hedges were all aglow with their delicious blossoms, their petals bent wide back as though to catch the very essence of the sunlight on their golden stamens. We left the main road a little below Trevi, and driving through fields and oak woods, passed up the hills by a steep short cut which leads to the town above. This road cannot be recommended to travellers unless they go on foot; our poor little city horses struggled painfully over the sand and pebbles of the numerous streams it crosses. But what a stretch of country for the artist! Everywhere the poppies were in flower—a shimmer of pure cadmiums and carmines under the oaks and the olives. After about an hour’s climb we came out suddenly on the broad bastions of the road which runs from Trevi to the convent of S. Martino.