Bracco Pass: Journey in a Storm Cloud, Dickens_1845-2020

CHARLES DICKENS, 1844, wrote: “There is nothing in Italy, more beautiful to me, than the coast- road between Genoa and Spezzia."

In fact... ! Charles-Dickens, route Genoa-La-Spezia: It was not in such a season, however, that we traversed this road on our way to Rome. The middle of January was only just past, and it was very gloomy and dark weather; very wet besides. In crossing the fine pass of Bracco, we encountered such a storm of mist and rain, that we travelled in a cloud the whole way. There might have been no Mediterranean in the world, for anything that we saw of it there, except when a sudden gust of wind, clearing the mist before it, for a moment, showed the agitated sea at a great depth below, lashing the distant rocks, and spouting up its foam furiously. The rain was incessant; every brook and torrent was greatly swollen; and such a deafening leaping, and roaring, and thundering of water, I never heard the like of in my life.

Charles Dickens_In crossing the fine pass of Bracco, we encountered such a storm of mist and rain, that we travelled in a cloud the whole way_Ph ©Paolo Maggiani

At this time of the year, January, 175 years ago, it was 1845, Charles Dickens is traveling, Pictures from Italy Chapter 9, To Rome by Pisa and Siena