Save articles for later Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. Prayers and blisters. Did we take a wrong turn back there? Is God watching over us? Will we arrive in time for aperitivi ? Like pilgrims jostling for holy water, our random thoughts during long days of walking under a Tuscan sun mix the spiritual with the banal.
These free-range flights of fancy liberated on the Via Francigena – of sore feet and divine intervention – link me to 1000 years of history and the generations of pilgrims for whom all roads led to Rome. In the Middle Ages, the Via Francigena was Europe’s overland spine, a pilgrimage often likened to Spain’s better-known Camino de Santiago – but much longer, centuries older and, these days, far less crowded. The route begins in the English cathedral city of Canterbury, cuts through France and Switzerland, traverses some of Europe’s most spectacular alpine passes and meanders through the splendid wine country of central Italy to end in the holy city of Rome.
For an age, I’ve dreamed of walking the Via Francigena. In another life, I would have a spare four months to devote to the full go-to-whoa 2000 kilometres. For now, I can manage a week-long hike across Tuscany, a path strung between some of the region’s most beautiful hill towns and fuelled by the pleasures of the Tuscan table.
From episcopal slippers to digital daypacks The route might have been forgotten if not for Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury, who noted th.
