Sandy announces our next adventure – trekking the Via Francigena in Europe!
In 2018 we traveled to Europe and hiked 500 miles in seven countries over a three-month period. The first of our four treks was on the Camino Portugues, taking us 150 miles from Porto, Portugal, to Santiago de Compostela, Spain. In addition to encountering a rich variety of historic and cultural sites on this pilgrimage hike, we also experienced the unfolding beauty of the region on our own two feet.
Always on the lookout for unique and lesser-known European trekking adventures, we came across a different type of pilgrimage trek that intrigued us – the Via Francigena. The approximately 2,000-kilometer / 1,240-mile path begins in Canterbury, England and ends at St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, adjacent to the city of Rome, Italy.
The Via Francigena (pronounced “Fran-CHEE-ge-na“) was an important route as far back as the Roman Empire, when a road was built over the lower elevation Great St. Bernard Pass to cross the Alps to points north. During the medieval era pilgrims used the route to visit the Pope and view the tombs of the apostles Peter and Paul. The path name translates to “the road that comes from France,” and is also known as the “Camino to Rome.” Today’s trail roughly corresponds to the route of Sigeric the Serious, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who walked to Rome around 990 AD and kept a journal of his travels.
Much less popular than the Camino de Santiago, the Via Francigena recorded about 50,000 people trekking some portion of it in 2022, compared to over 400,000 who hiked one of the Camino routes during that same time.
By Paulusburg, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Since we can’t stay in Europe’s Schengen area for more than 90 days, completing the entire route at one time is not a possibility for us. So we will start our Via Francigena trek from Montreux, Switzerland, where we ended our last European hike in 2018. From there, our plan is to hike about 700 miles to Rome over 52 stages.
After leaving Lake Geneva, the trek wil take us up and over Switzerland’s Great St. Bernard Pass (8,100 feet) before descending to the Aosta Valley in Italy.
From there, we will hike through a variety of historic and cultural areas, including several UNESCO World Heritage sites. We will encounter many types of terrain, from rice fields, to olive orchards, to vineyards. In addition to trekking through the Alps we will traverse through the Apennines Mountains and its La Cisa Pass. As we near Rome, we will enter the famous Tuscany region, spending the night in medieval towns such as Lucca, San Gimignano, Monteriggioni, and Siena.
Lucca, Italy
After our 700 miles of trekking from Montreux, we will arrive at the end of the Via Francigena at St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City.
We plan to take rest days in some of the most picturesque and historic places to recharge and sightsee. To optimize our trekking weather for climbing over the Great St. Bernard Pass in August and walking most of Italy in the fall, we will also take a couple of hiking breaks. During one four-day pause we will travel to Monaco. Another extended break will take us to San Marino and the Balkan Peninsula to visit Albania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia over three-and-a-half weeks.
There are many variants and extensions on the Via Francigena. For example it is possible to continue south from Rome to the boot of Italy, as pilgrims did to organize sea transport to Jerusalem. And many of the core Via Francigena stages have alternates, so it became a “choose your own adventure” exercise to settle on the walking routes which embodied the most cultural significance and natural beauty for us.
As a prelude to our Via Francigena trek, we will hike an extension of the path in England, called the Pilgrims’ Way. It is another historical route used by pilgrims from either Winchester or London to reach the shrine of Thomas Becket in the Canterbury Cathedral. Becket was the Archbishop of Canterbury when he was killed in the cathedral in 1170 by knights of King Henry II during a Church and Crown disagreement. The classic book The Canterbury Tales (published in 1392) centers on the stories of a group of pilgrims making their way from London to Canterbury to visit the Thomas Becket shrine.
The Pilgrims’ Way is being integrated into the Via Francigena as an extension of the major Canterbury to Rome route. The so-called “Francigena Britannica” path differs slightly from the Pilgrims’ Way as it travels along the Thames River as it leaves Southwark Cathedral in London before turning inland to meet with the main trail. We plan to incorporate this variant into our Pilgrims’ Way trek as well.
Pilgrims’ Way start at Southwark Cathedral in London and end at the Christ Church entrance to Canterbury Cathedral
By Paul Gillett, Southwark Cathedral , CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14242615
By Chris Brown – Christ Church Gate, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7435045
While hiking 100 miles on The Pilgrims’ Way over eight stages, we plan to take in the natural landscape of the North Downs Hills and the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Beauty (AONB). We believe this trek will be a great warm-up for our longer hiking adventure beginning in Switzerland. We plan to leave London at the end of July and reach Rome at the beginning of November.
So join us this summer and fall as we trek the Via Francigena!
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