Walk: the Via Francigena (‘road through France’) |

Distance: 2,000km (1,200 miles) |

From: Canterbury, UK to Rome, Italy |

Time: Four months (for us) |

First: you can read all about who we are here.

But really first: What’s the Via Francigena? And why did we choose to walk it? Good questions.

Chances are, you won’t have heard of it, and neither had we. But in 2016 while working in Tuscany, we noticed this beguiling little guy everywhere:

Via Francigena

We asked around, and soon found out he signposted an old, old, travel route, called the Via Francigena (see above for how you say that). It was a pilgrim path that sliced straight through the region we were living in, on its way to Rome. And what’s more, it started in Canterbury in the UK, our home country. Aaand in case you’re wondering, that’d be a casual 2,000km.

We became quite fixated on this secret little route through Europe. We asked our Italian neighbours about this ‘amazing walk we’d discovered’. They shrugged and nodded, quite familiar with it, gently correcting our appalling pronunciation.

We got our travel stuff out to have a look at it. It’s rather impressive:

Via Francigena map

Take a deep breath, as this is the itinerary:

Starting at Canterbury Cathedral, you first pick your way down to Dover via the North Downs Way and hop over the Channel. Then, cutting across north eastern France you scale the Jura Mountains and push onward into Switzerland. Here you round the Eastern end of Lake Geneva, and go up over the Alps via the Great St Bernard Pass. Landing in the Aosta Valley on the Italian side of the mountains, the path passes between the powerhouse cities of Turin and Milan, before crossing down into Tuscany and pushing relentlessly on down to Lazio and, eventually, Rome.

And breathe out.

Related posts:

Our Via Francigena guide

9 life lessons from walking 2,000km

Our Via Francigena highlights | the 6 best bits

Within all that are some real travel highlights too: through the old battlefields and cemeteries of the Western Front, the vineyards of the Champagne region, the Alpine mountain passes usually covered in snow, the risotto rice fields of Vicelli, the Ligurian coast and Tuscan cities of Lucca and Siena. Oh yes, there’s a long, long list of places to explore along the way.

But apart from the incredible length and breadth of the walk, let’s talk more about it being a pilgrimage. It was first recorded in a little travelogue by the loftily named Sigeric the Serious, over 1000 years ago.

Pilgrims on the Via Francigena both then and now carry keys – the emblem of St Peter

whose Eternal City is the reward for all this effort. Pilgrims are also issued a pilgrim passport, a ‘credential’ to get stamped along the route. The walk is long and in centuries gone by it wasn’t clear if you’d actually ever come back at all. A risky, devout and exciting journey for an old sinner to catch a bit of Heavenly rays.

Now, it’s still tough for us: long days walking in all weathers, roughing it in mixture of campsites, pilgrim hostels and the odd Air BnB. But hey, at least there isn’t the prospect of arriving in Rome and then turning around and having to go all the way back…

It all sounds pretty ancient, we know. But a funny thing: walking pilgrimages are actually becoming more and more popular.

Last year over a quarter of a million people -religious and not- walked the Camino di Santiago in Northern Spain. And there are deep-trodden pilgrimages all over the world: like the Kumano Kodo Trail in Japan, Adam’s Peak in Sri Lanka, or the Inca Trail in Peru. That’s millions of pilgrims of all sorts alive today, trekking across huge swathes of land for days, weeks and months. What maybe shouldn’t feel very relevant or necessary to the modern day person, is, in some weird way.

Maybe not so weird as there are some obvious benefits. There’s the challenge: the risk, exertion, and achievement. There’s the wanderlust of travel generally, for sure. And the companionship, the being part of a deep human history, too.

But there’s also all this space. Enough to think, to breathe, maybe to mend. And time for more complicated things to take root too: hope, clarity, relief, and faith – of all sorts, including in yourself.

Interested? Come with us virtually:

Read our first Via Francigena journal entry here

We’re curious: what do you think of going on a long walk? What about on pilgrimage? Get in touch below, and subscribe on our homepage to keep track of what we’re doing.