The Times, August 27 2010
After the hardships and slow rhythms of walking the ancient Via Francigena, the joy of arriving was
indescribable
I call it the footfall of prayer — following ancient pilgrim routes — and I must be hooked on it. Ten years ago I walked from Walsingham in Norfolk to Santiago de Compostela, from one medieval shrine and place of pilgrimage to another. This summer I covered a similar distance, walking 2,200km over 75 days from my home in Coggeshall, Essex, via London to Rome. The experiences were very different. The Camino Francés, the route through France to Santiago in north-western Spain, attracts thousands of pilgrims. The Via Francigena, which starts in Canterbury and ends in Rome, is much less popular and is generally a solitary journey. It is also far tougher.
What links them is a sense of history and the link with the generations who have trodden the same route on some sort of personal or spiritual quest. Another common thread is the indescribable joy of arriving — that first glimpse of the dome of the cathedral at Santiago, or the view of St Peter’s basilica below you when you see it for the first time from the top of Monte Mario. The thrill of arriving would not be there without the pilgrim journey, and without its hardships.
The Via Francigena broadly follows the pilgrim route of the Middle Ages, known to us in some detail because Sigeric, Archbishop of Canterbury, left a stage-by-stage account of his return journey from Rome to Canterbury in the 10th century. I set out from my parish church of St Peter ad Vincula with two aims — to walk via London and so to go from St Paul’s cathedral to St Peter’s basilica, and to end my pilgrimage at the church in Rome where St Peter’s chains are kept, San Pietro in Vincoli.
I left Coggeshall on May 28 and four days later walked across the Millennium Bridge in London after Evensong in St Paul’s. I arrived in Rome on August 11.
The entire journey was a walk through history, but the small Lombard Romanesque Cathedral of St Donnino at Fidenza in northern Italy was for me the most evocative link with pilgrims of past generations. A statue of Simon Peter by the western portal shows the Apostle pointing the way to Rome, with an inscription in Latin saying: “I show you the way to Rome” — making it one of the world’s first road signs. More marvellous still is a frieze of 13th-century pilgrims carved on the cathedral’s southern exterior. One, with a cowl over his head and staff in hand, and another with a satchel, have been adopted as the logo on the waymarks along the Via Francigena.
Despite EU and Italian funding to promote the Via, the waymarking is still far from perfect and it is all too easy to take the wrong turning. The challenges in Italy vary from region to region. The descent from the Grand St Bernard Pass through the Alpine hamlets of the Aosta valley is perfectly waymarked and, although a tough stage, is a pleasure to walk. Thereafter in the rest of Piedmont, the waymarks become less helpful and going through Lombardy and Tuscany they are more erratic, and in some places there are just a few faded yellow stickers or they peter out altogether.
But the daily contest with route finding, as well as coping with the aches and pains of a very long walk, were also part of the journey — and in the end each step became an act of faith and a prayer of sorts.
There are many small shrines on the Via Francigena, reminders of the original primary purpose of the route as a path to the Mother Church of Christianity. There were often fresh flowers at the shrines, even in remote areas.
As well as these man-made religious monuments, I found the natural world around me also began to take on a spiritual dimension. Because time had slowed down, or rather I had slowed down, I began to have a real sense of the passing seasons. When I walked through the Champagne vineyards the grapes were little more than buds. By the time I got to Rome, in mid-August, the grapes were almost ready for picking. Through June and July I watched the hay and corn ripening and then harvested, and by early August the hillsides of Tuscany were being ploughed again.
To minimise weight I carried just one book, St Luke’s Gospel, and I read through it from beginning to end, a few verses at a time each morning, often finding unexpected inspiration.
The route in the Middle Ages included crossing the River Po, and this ferry, from Corte Sant’ Andrea to Calandasco near Piacenza, was put back into service in 1998. It is operated by Danilo Parisi, and he keeps an affectionate and attentive eye on the pilgrim route. He has counted the pilgrims crossing since 1998. Numbers have increased year by year, now to more than 300 a year.
Most of those who cross the Po on Parisi’s launch started in Lausanne or at the Grand St Bernard. Only a handful have come from Canterbury, a few more from Holland and Germany. There was no record in Parisi’s book of anyone walking from London.
“Only about one pilgrim in ten actually starts from home,” said Parisi. “Most just walk small sections at a time.”
During my 75-day journey, I met just three other long-distance pilgrims: Everdiene Geerling, a Dutch education consultant who started from Canterbury, Kees Venema, a physiotherapist who set out from his home in Amsterdam, and Austri Fletcher, a teacher from California who began her journey in Besançon in eastern France.
At the very top of Grand St Bernard you walk over the old Roman road which bears deep wheel ruts from centuries of use. There are similar sections further on where the modern pilgrim can also sense the footfall of past generations, including a cobbled medieval road south of Lucca, and several kilometres of paved Roman basalt road south of Bolsena.
After the Alps, there are many more hills and passes ahead — Italy is three quarters mountain and hill — and some steep climbs over narrow paths on broken ground. There are beautiful cities to walk through and stay in — Aosta, Vercelli, Pavia, Fidenza, Lucca, Siena and Viterbo. I interspersed my walk by taking eight rest days to enjoy and explore some of them.
The Via Francigena winds its way through some of the most scenic hilltop Tuscan towns — the distant views approaching and leaving San Miniato and San Gimignano are timeless — and through Tuscany’s enchanting Val d’Orcia. Indeed, the rolling hills of Tuscany, with their landmark farmhouses flanked by columns of cypress trees, and with their walled castles set in a perfect tapestry of vineyards, cornfields and wooded groves, are seen at their best at three miles an hour.
A lone wolf bounded across my tracks in southern Tuscany, and several snakes crossed my path, but the biggest menace I faced in Italy was from unleashed farm dogs.
There is no shortage of accommodation in Italy — monasteries, convents and parish houses, and bed and breakfasts and hotels, although some of the religious houses understandably provide less than three-star comfort. Walking through Italy at the height of a hot summer, I rarely had problems finding food and water. Every small hamlet and village still has a water fountain or tap, and most still have a café or bar. France may be easier to cross on foot — it is flatter — but often the only source of water in the lost villages of the French interior is the tap in the cemeteries, and sometimes in France I had to walk more than 40km in a day to find somewhere to sleep.
I arrived in St Peter’s Square as the Pope’s weekly audience from his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo was being broadcast on giant screens to the crowds queuing to enter the basilica. I made my way to the Pilgrim Office where I presented my pilgrim passport — a record of my journey which I had stamped every night in a church, tourist office or hotel and which would qualify me for a Pilgrim’s Testimonium.
When I told the girl at the desk that I had come all the way from London, she looked astonished. “Da vero?” she asked. “Sì, è vero,” I said, adding that there were two other long-distance pilgrims on their way that day, and serendipitously the two Dutch pilgrims, Everdiene and Kees, walked into the office. We had set off from different places at different times but we had all arrived together. The Via Francigena, like any pilgrimage, is a great leveller.
The Confraternity of Pilgrims to Rome, pilgrimstorome.org.uk, provides practical information and assistance to anyone setting out on this journey.
Brian Mooney is an author and journalist. He is writing a book about his journey: A Long Way for a Pizza
© Times Newspapers Ltd 2010 Registered in England No. 894646 Registered office: 1 Virginia Street, London, E98 1XY
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