Tuesday – 26 June 2018
If you were wondering about the name “Via Francigena”, I have to admit that even a few weeks back I had no inkling that it even existed. But let me explain…

When we moved into our apartment in Ponzano Superiore at the beginning of June we noticed a sign in the centre of the village that read “Via Francigena”. We started reading up about it and found that it was essentially a pilgrimage route – much like the Camino de Santiago (the Way of St. James) which I am well aware of – which passes right through our little village we now call home.

The Camino de Santiago is “a large network of ancient pilgrim routes stretching across Europe and coming together at the tomb of St. James (Santiago in Spanish) in Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain.” And yes, this pilgrimage is a physical one; you walk on foot with backpack on your back. The most famous Camino route is the one from the Pyrénées in France to the beautiful city of Santiago, a walk of around 800km.

Now some people walk the Camino for spiritual and others do it for religious reasons. It is estimated that 20% of people nowadays do it purely for religious purposes; the other 80% do it more for a spiritual journey. This spiritual journey may be to examine one’s life; past present and/or future, some do it in remembrance of a dearly departed loved one and yet others just want to get away from it all, mostly from the daily grind. And by the way, Mimi, Adri’s sister, last year walked the Camino, starting in Porto in Portugal and ending in Santiago… no mean feat.

Now after our strenuous walk between Monterosso al Mare and Vernazza in the Cinque Terre last week our thoughts returned to the Via Francigena and decided we needed to test ourselves a bit better, we cannot be that timid to have found the 3.4km of that route challenging. To our defence, it was hellish hot on the day, we had no water, and the climb-up and climb-down were steep, very steep.

And so it was that we latched onto the idea of doing one leg of the many of the Via Francigena, which essentially start in Canterbury in England, passes through France and Switzerland , traverses through Italy to come to rest in Rome. Doing the full route will set you back 1900km. The 24^th leg of the Italian chapter, a relatively short 17.4km, passes through our village and starts in Aulla and ends in Sarzana. We would leave the car, obviously, in Aulla, do the trek and then take the train from Sarzana back to Aulla. Easy… Or so we thought.

We wanted to get an early 07:00 start, we got a 08:00 start, no surprises there.

We found free public parking behind the town hall in Aulla, found the San Caprasio church around the corner, and thus started our day pilgrimage of the Via Francigena.

We wound our way along a few back streets of Aulla, crossed the bridge over the river Magra and, just past it, a local ancient showed us the Francigena way. It was unnecessary as it was clearly marked but we in any case thanked him profusely for his help, it was great to have had a brief encounter with this lovely old-timer.

I was carrying our backpack, a huge one with a nett weight of an enormous 3kg which consisted of two litres of water and some snacks for breakfast and breaks.

The entire trail snakes along winding footpaths, sometime tarred roads, sometimes dirt roads, with the directions rather easy to follow. You will find white over red markings here and there on a pole, a tree or a rock, or there may be a proper signboard pointing the way. A few times though, coming to a crossroad, we had to call up the route map I had downloaded onto maps.me to confirm our direction.

After a short initial climb we reached a small village called Case Burcione consisting of a few houses and then the climb became rather steep, or so we thought at that stage.

Adri let me walk in front. I guess her reasoning was that if I were to wake up any snakes along the way, it would possibly be pissed and bite me. My reasoning was that if I were to wake up that snake, he would have enough time to enjoy an early morning coffee to prepare himself to pounce for breakfast by the time Adri arrived.

There seemed to be only uphills, not sure what happened to all the downhills, there were few. Be as it may, the downhills were as bad as the uphills, the uphill requires strenuous climbing, the downhill requires strenuous braking. I was bemoaning the fact why they could not have made this trail on level ground, going around the mountain instead of over it. If I had to choose between uphill and downhill, I’d easily choose level, thank you very much.

There is a saying in Afrikaans – when describing a very rough mountain path like the one we were on – that goes “’n bobbejaan sal nie eens met ‘n knopkierie hier kan loop nie” (a baboon would, not even with the assistance of a knobkierie, be able to walk here). And they did not even give me a knopkierie.

When the village of Bibola came into sight it looked very similar to Ponzano Superiore and I remember feeling rather disappointed that we had walked there so quickly, we were only about one hour into our walk. But my disappointment turned to pure anguish when I realized that Ponzano was still a long… long way off.

The official route bypasses Bibola but we decided to take a look around. This turned out to be a wonderful hilltop village, smaller than Ponzano and also reasonably well preserved. One got the distinct feeling that very few of the old buildings are occupied; there is a lovely rustic feel to the place.

Even though there are not many people living there, the handwritten bus schedule on the bus stop notes four busses per day. I take it they mostly arrive and leave empty. While having our breakfast there I contemplated waiting for the next one to surprise the bus driver, but Adri jerked me from my daydreams with a “we need to get a move on”. I was just thinking…

We came to a town called Vecchietto where we took the wrong route. We were scolded by an old lady from above, pointing us in the right direction. Through the village we meandered, seemed like quite a number of septuagenarian, octogenarian and nonagenarians live here. We saw a few houses that people were slowly restoring to its former glory, so we assumed there must be some sort of a reawakening happening in this town.

And still the trail went up, only now and then taking a slight dip. We stopped off at a perfectly clear little stream to catch our breath and splashing some of that icy cold water on our faces and arms, the cooling off being helped along by the fresh breeze that had just started up.

We walked a short distance on a deserted tarred road which was bliss not having to concentrate on tripping over a rock or root. But soon enough we were engulfed once again by the wilderness.

It seemed like at least four hours had passed when we finally caught sight of our little town of Ponzano Superiore. In reality, four hours had passed, and Ponzano was probably just past halfway to Sarzana! We could have gone up to our apartment for a drink, something to eat or a rest… or a beer, but that would be cheating. We sat ourselves down at the little water fountain in centre town, had some snacks we had packed, filled our water bottle, and continued on our way.

On the rough footpath just before reaching Castello Brina I complained that my feet were starting to burn, it was as if I was walking barefoot on a bed of coals… slowly. Adri concurred and guessed that she had two blisters on her feet. This would prove to be true on further investigation once we got home.

 

 

We passed the remains of Castello Brina but we did not linger as we took a walk there shortly after we arrived in Ponzano. From here the trail suddenly goes down, like fast, with loose rocks on the trail making going rather difficult.

 

 

 

 

The trail finally levelled out where a number of farms and smallholdings are situated not far from Sarzana. People there were growing mostly grapes and olives, and by interrogating those trees and vines I could see the small fruits clinging to its owners, both the grapes and olives were approximately the same size. The grapes would be ready to harvest during September and October and the olives by early November.

Here the trail becomes very easy as it is mostly dead level, but now there was no shade to speak of. All day we walked amongst mostly lovely shaded pathways but down here there was no mercy, the sun was beating down on us as if we had done something wrong. But, at around 25°C it was not too harsh, certainly nowhere near as harsh as what we experienced in the Cinque Terre last week.

We came around a corner and an old lady told us to stop and wait. She ran inside and fetched us a bottle of spring water. We still had plenty of water with us but this one was icy cold… we thanked her profusely as she waved us goodbye.

Near to Sarzana, for a few kilometres, we walked alongside the beautiful Lunense Canal, 23 km in length with an irrigation water distribution network of over 140 km. The going here was easy and the canal to our left had a lovely cooling effect on our minds.

 

 

 

 

We ambled into Sarzana town proper, turned a corner and there, to our surprise, was the parking lot where we parked a while ago when visiting this town. I never thought that a parking lot could ever be such a welcome sight. We strolled into the old town which we hardly recognised, last time we were here it was abuzz, it was market day, today it was wonderfully relaxed.

 

 

We reached the Basilica Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta and thus our one-day pilgrimage came to an end. “Whoah boy, not so fast” I heard myself thinking, we still had 2km to walk from the Aulla train station back to our car!

It was now 14:00, so it had taken us six hours to walk, and rest, the 17.4km. Not too bad taking into consideration that most of the going was either uphill or downhill. It was 15:30 when we screeched into the train station at Aulla and 16:00 when we were finally reunited with our car.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Believe me, that Peroni out on our porch – with a cool breeze blowing over my several body parts – had never tasted that good. Sore and burning feet, sore and burning legs, sore and burning brain aside, this was a wonderfully unique experience, something I would definitely do again. One leg at a time… those times spread out, you know… over multiple days or weeks or months. But, who knows, maybe, just maybe one day, we would have enough impetus and fitness to tackle the Camino.

Home