Today’s is a nice introduction to the Modena Apennines, the most challenging in the region for altitude differences, but also the most exciting. After just 3 km you climb from the valley floor to the thousand-year-old parish church of Coscogno, a Byzantine memory. Just enough time for a short visit (possibly with a snack at the bar in the nearby village), and you descend again via the ancient cart track that leads to another tributary of the Panaro River (the ancient Scoltenna River). Here the next climb is really long and tiring, before arriving at the pretty village of Benedello, the scene of a fierce battle during the Second World War. Now you stay at altitude, crossing panoramic territories where Romans and Byzantines built military garrisons that resisted the Lombards until the last. Finally we will arrive at devotional places, first pagan and then Christian, from which were made the most important parish church and civil settlements, the oldest in Pavullo.