Cassino

We camped in a car park for the archaeological museum. It has a water tap, black and grey water emptying. Our first impression was not good. The access was difficult to find with the first 2 approaches being on a road unsuitable for buses and trucks, only on the third attempt did we find a suitable road and all these attempts were through rush hour town traffic. The car park was full of kids doing wheelies on their backfiring motorbikes, not actually causing any problems other than noise pollution. The town was razed to the ground in March 1944 by the allies, so it is modern, medium rise apartments but despite being “modern” still looks scruffy. On our night of arrival we walked to town and had a meal in the top Google reviewed restaurant to mark our 31 wedding anniversary, the food was good but not the best environment for a romantic meal. The second day we walked up Monte Cassino to the famous abbey of Benedict monks. This abbey was destroyed in May 1944 by the allies and was rebuilt in the image of the ruined abbey, it is very large and very ornate, not for the first time in Italy have I wondered at the display of wealth and power on display by the church. From there we walked to the Polish cemetery, viewed a very disturbing display of the war and looked at the 1051 immaculately kept graves of the Polish dead. If only we would learn from wars, but we always just repeat the same errors time after time. The walk up the mountain and back down was however very nice and the weather good apart from one storm. My big excitement in the walk was coming across 2 groups of wild boar.