"08/08/2023, Cort - Verrès, 3. The premature stop the day before turned out to be the right choice. Walking this route is beautiful, just as it is beautiful to struggle to keep going with every step. Fatigue makes you feel good; it focuses your concentration on simple movements. Your body seems to talk to you; your breath is laboured, your lungs swell and your heart beats like a hammer beating hard on your chest. It is like doing any physical activity, but I feel something more that I cannot explain. Fatigue is therefore pleasant, as long as one does not feel pain, in which case everything changes, but often the two merge and one migrates from one to the other several times. After three days from the start, the legs miraculously loosen up, all pain disappears and there is only a long way to go. It is a wonderful feeling! The body seems to have finally tuned in, as well as the head; however, it took a few days to fully immerse oneself in the Francigena experience and the adaptation of the body manifests itself most clearly. At the end of the stage, we meet Renato, a friendly farmer on a vintage Vespa that he has no intention of selling. He tells us some anecdotes about the valley and his personal history; I ask him to greet us in dialect and he replies practically in French. We arrive in Verrès with ease, we sleep at the hostel Il Casello, attached to the station. It may be that I have always had a soft spot for stations since the days of the inter-rail, it may be the new pilgrim friends we meet at dinner, it may be the timeless atmosphere of the hostel, but I feel that something has changed today, and that I would like nothing more than this 'slow-motion sailing'."