Day 380 – EU – Italy [Naples to Pompei]

19/04/21

35.5km

  From Naples (Italy) to Pompei (Italy)

Europe

A beautiful stage for a birthday run, around Vesuvio all the way to historical Pompei – and… 50% of the way in!

Vesuvio engulfed in clouds

My first birthday on the road! Last year I was in lockdown, grounded in Paris, having “only” logged 3 months of running before the punishment was served. This year is definitely a much much happier birthday! And what a stage: Naples to Pompei – two superb cities on paper (and not just on paper). I had a spring in my step as I left Naples under the drizzling rain.

Historic Cathedral of Pompei

As I ran towards Pompei, I thought that today (or tomorrow in fact) I will pass a symbolic milestone… 50% of the world run distance. When I left I announced I would run 26,232km across 4 continents. This is the minimum distance set out by the WRA. As it turns out, and because Covid19 had me run around Europe for much longer than I had planned as all other continents were closed, I will end up running a lot more kms. It feels awesome to feel so good, healthy and fresh, having run half of what I had planned. The greatest birthday present in fact!

The Ruins of Pompei… from the closed entry gate….

In terms of the arrival in Pompei I was a bit disappointed. The attraction of going to Pompei was the Ruins and the opportunity to visit the Roman city, frozen by the ashes and excavated nearly intact. Alas the site was closed. I tried to go around every possible way, through the car park, cutting across the fields… but I was always met by an iron fence and gates, closed to the public. I will definitely get back here one day to discover the site.

Being around Vesuvio is very special to me. As a child I cherished a book of Haroun Tazieff that I received at Christmas. I was fascinated by the pictures of Mount Etna in activity, the lava, the vivid colours, the suits the vulcanologists had to wear to get near the summit. When I lived in Asia, I climbed a few active volcanoes, Rinjani and Semeru notably. The latter was the most emotional climb I ever did. Reaching the summit before sunrise to see the lava explode up in the air every 2 minutes was aboslutely magnificient, like seeing the heartbeat of the earth… Vesuvio is one of the few active volcanoes of mainland Europe. It has not errupted since 1944 but it is thought it will errupt again. I was glad it was quiet today 🙂

I treated myself to delicious italian food today, concluding with a sfogliatelle with chocolate and a limone ice cream from the local gelateria. And thank you to everyone who sent me lovely birthday messages from all over the world today, you made my day!

Check my daily run GPS data on or

Here is the map of today’s run: