To my right were the Apuan Alps, scarred white from two thousand years of marble mining. To my left, a few miles off, the sea. And directly beneath me: asphalt, a narrow shoulder, and the persistent attentiveness of not getting clipped by Fiat Pandas and silent electric Citroëns.
I was walking a stretch of the Via Francigena, the medieval pilgrim route that runs from Canterbury to Rome, from Camaiore to Sarzana. It’s, how do you say, gritty Tuscany. This is not the Tuscany of postcards.
In Carrara I got the industry of marble instead: giant cubes of it hoisted by cranes, sitting in open lots like unclaimed luggage, waiting to become countertops in bougie kitchen remodels. Less likely to become the next David. I’d come to meet a friend at the 100-mile mark of her Via Francigena walk, a centerpiece of her sabbatical; I’d do the next 50 or so miles with her.
Which is to say I didn’t really look into what I was getting myself into. I was along for the ride no matter what. If I’d pictured anything, it was the Tuscany she’d been describing from the trail for weeks.
South of Siena, the route rolls through the Val d’Orcia and the Crete Senesi with its white gravel roads, cypress-lined ridgelines, as well as San Quirico, Radicofani perched on its volcanic cone. North of Siena you get the stunning San Gimignano and Monteriggioni. The stuff that launched a thousand Under-the-Tuscan-Sun fantasies.
The Via Francigena is roughly 1,250 miles and, at a pace of 12 to 15 miles per hour, per day, takes about 90 days. Most walk a section that for one- or two-weeks, usually in Tuscany, and revisit it over a lifetime. Many just do the final 60 or so miles into Rome, the minimum on foot to earn the Testimonium, the official completion certificate, which is why the last stages are the most crowded.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
