In 2017 I was training for an ultra marathon and during my long runs I discovered a walk called the Via Francigena passes very close to our home. Upon further investigation I found it was an old pilgrims’ trail that goes from Canterbury in England to Rome.

Much like the Camino de Santiago in Spain, it is for walking off your sins and being absolved in the great holy city. I’m not Catholic so the sins part didn’t interest me so much but the idea of walking such a long and varied route captured my imagination. I decided to forge a long term goal to walk the whole of the Italian part, from Grand St Bernard (about 45 minutes from home) to Rome over the next 10 years or so. And gave it the loose title of “Home to Rome”.

In 2018, I set off with the dog and did 3 days through the Aosta valley, staying in dog friendly hotels, all pre-booked. There is an app for the walk, which is superb. Breaks it down into 45 sections of around 20km each. I keep it open on my phone and the GPS picks up where I am. It is so detailed that I can instantly tell if I have gone wrong and find the path again. Not that that happens too often; the signage en route is mostly great.

2019 was a tricky year for me and I didn’t make the time to do my bit of the trail. I’m slightly annoyed about that but decided that I would charge on this year and booked four days in the diary for the beginning of September.

Again, just me and the dog. Originally, I had thought it would be fun to ask people to join me for bits of it, but right now, I love the thought of just pottering along on my own. My only minor concerns being where we might next find water or food. I can start when I want, stop when I want and eat and sleep where I want. As a mum, these small things are actually huge luxuries.

Here is a small run down of my four days on the trail.

Day 1 and 2 (Nus to Chatillon and Chatillon to Verrès)

I dropped my daughter at school and took off for Italy at 8:15am. Just over an hour and half later I was in Nus, the finishing point from my 2018 trail and just south of Aosta.

I parked at the station - an important logistical point for the return. I dug out my pack and the dog’s (I sometimes can’t move for people cooing over how cute she is with her doggy backpack on), opened the app and found the trail very quickly.

And soon I was walking. The reason I have lumped the first two days together is for two reasons. 1. The landscape was similar and 2. I found them both incredibly hard work.

I am always anxious for the first two days when I leave home. No matter what I am doing, how fun or exciting it is, the stretch of the umbilcal cord for a mostly stay at home mum is hard. Intellectually, I know have nothing to worry about. The kids are safe and loved and looked after. My husband has learned over the years to manage fantastically well without me. They create their own rhythm between the three of them that is so important for their relationship.

I don’t even particularly miss them for such short periods of time. In fact, I am always glad of the break but for some reason the going away, the loosening of timeframes (any full time parent will understand the managing of their own life around the timeframes of their kids) is disconcerting. I wonder how to fill my day. I take a while to relax into “just walking”, surely there is something else that urgently needs doing??

So those first two days were a little anxy despite the freedom and the excitement of being on an adventure. The good thing is that I eventually recognised it as a recurring theme of all my travels and I hope that next time I will anticipate it and head it off at the pass!

This time round I decided to not book any hotels. I did a week on the Camino de Santiago in around 2015 with my friend, Tash, and we just booked as we went every day. I loved it, it added so much to the excitement and novelty of it all but had thought that because I had the dog I would have to be a bit more organised. Meh, I thought, let’s challenge that!

Being a lover of books written by adventurers, I was inspired and came up with the idea of wild camping on this trip. Just deciding when and where to stop every day. Carrying all my kit and finding my own rhythm. My husband was looking for an excuse to buy some super lightweight camping kit so produced a tent and sleeping mat. The planning of the kit was fun - I love that.

The only downside was that the dog could not be allowed in the super lightweight tent for fear of ripping it instantly. So she had to have her own tiny tent. And bed. And all her food obviously. And so my pack grew heavy. In an untried rucksack. Do you see where I’m going here?

By the end of day one, traipsing up and down mountainous paths and not really timing our eating very well because I was a little worried about where we would sleep and because due to the virus, the restaurants were not open until around 7pm ( by which time I wanted camp to be set up and sorted), I was tired, my weight-bearing joints hurt and I was cursing the damn kit.

Add to that my research which had told me that wild camping in Italy is actually not legal but if you were careful and respectful it would probably be ok. In theory this sounded fine. In practice I was nervous about someone shouting “gerrof my land!” at me.

I set up camp just after Chatillon, above the trail, behind a rock, under some trees on the edge of a vineyard. It was windy so a bit tricky getting it all up properly but eventually we were settled in. I was tired but excited to be doing what I had set out to do. I listened to a podcast, made a cup of tea (on my list of exciting things to do on the trip - drink tea while wild camping - seriously…) and settled down for the night.

And here’s where it all came a bit unstuck. I was not in the slightest bit nervous about being out there on my own although I was still worried about being shouted at, but what was really bad was how freaking uncomfortable the super light mattress and pillow were. I hadn’t stretched (an absolute must for me after exercise, but forgotten in the excitement) and I had a lousy, achy, painkiller-filled night. I was also hungry and could hear the dog whining in her tent on and off. My indoor dog presumably not impressed at her outside living!

**Hers n hers tents. I loved the camping, just not the super thin mattress…**

I was up early and packed down and on the road by 8:15am. The packing down was not such fun. I thought about my day and how we could manage it better in terms of food and finding somewhere to sleep that wasn’t going to be as stressful.

Regardless, I felt excited again as we headed off into the next morning. I stopped for breakfast about 10. It was already really really hot but my plan was to do about half way and stop in the shade for a snooze. That would allow us to rest during the hottest part of the day and to extend the day to catch the restaurants that evening before camping again the other side of Verrès.

Big mistake. The app had said the section was “challenging”. It had said that on day one but despite the heavy pack and the sore joints, I was ok. Day two, part one was also not too challenging. But after a sleep in a clearing in the woods, I was sluggish, hot, hungry and despite thinking I would just potter through the next half of the day, it became a hard slog uphill with a pack that felt heavier by the minute.

The signs in the Aosta valley give you times to the next destination and it seemed like the walk to Verrès never seemed to be getting any shorter. It was up and up and up and then, almost worse, down and down and down.

As I was finally walking into Verrès at around 6pm, the sun going down, both of us hungry and tired, I looked at the app to see what was on the other side of town and saw, to my horror, that it was flat farmland with a motorway, a trainline and a river. No chance of a secret camping spot for at least another hour’s walk and I was absolutely done in.

I found a restaurant, ate and drank, fed the dog and looked for a hostel. Guilt and annoyance at carrying all the heavy bloody camping kit ate away at me until I put on my big girls pants and decided it was my ruddy adventure and I would do as I pleased. And in this instance it was finding somewhere nearby to sleep. Immediately. And to add to that, I booked myself a campsite en route for the following night. Away went the stress of where to sleep and assuaged the guilt of all the camping stuff going unused.

A hot shower, a really good full-body stretching session and a six-bed dorm to ourselves and I was right as rain.

Day 3 (Verrès to Pont St Martin)

I pinged awake at 6:15am with the most genius of ideas. I packed, grabbed breakfast to take away, jumped on a train back to the car. I drove to the campsite for that night, dumped my huge bag, putting only the absolute essentials in Pixie’s pack, drove back to Verrès, left the car and started walking. Genius.

And what a glorious day that was. I felt light, physically and mentally. I took turns with the dog to carry the pack (it slung over my shoulder pretty comfortably and weighed no more than 1kg) and we fairly skipped on.

I was beginning to learn that despite finishing every night feeling done in that getting up every morning was a fresh start. The weather was glorious again and we made good progress, stopping for a proper lunch in Hône and then trotting on towards our campsite.

The going was much easier and gentler. To be honest, much as the Aosta valley is beautiful, it’s not much different to where we live - they even speak French fluently. And if I wanted to torture myself walking up and down hills with a huge pack on, I could just walk out my front door and do that any day.

This was starting to feel like Italy. Rolling trails, tiny mediaeval villages, vineyards, open fields, secret pathways under vines and alongside streams. Utterly glorious.

We sauntered into camp around 5:30pm and after feeding the dog I ordered a panaché (a shandy), tired but bloody chuffed with myself after a great day.

And as the time came to pitch my tent, I went to pick up my bag and discovered it had been kept safe all day in the most delightful little cabin with a double bed and electricity and so without a moment’s pause I said, “How much?” For €30 it was mine for the night.

Cheating? Bailing? Not living the adventure? Bugger that. It was my adventure and the best thing about it was that I could decide at any time how it worked out. I slept like a log, not even noticing the mosquitos that fairly ate me alive until I woke up at 8:30 looking like I had chicken pox… Oh well.

Day 4 (Pont St Martin to Ivrea)

Oh what a joy to start late after breakfast. I had a loose plan to walk to Borgofranco d’Ivrea to get the 2:30pm train and then get back to the car and home.

Only that wasn’t the end of the “section” and that didn’t sit right with me, so I shouldered the heavy bag once more (although lighter as no more food for the dog meant I shifted some of my stuff to her pack) and we headed out again feeling refreshed and relaxed.

What a glorious place Piemonte is. I took photos all day. We worked hard, walking almost without stopping for over 5 hours, but it felt joyous and calm and like I was doing what I came here to do - just put one foot in front of the other and soak it all in.

We finally arrived in Ivrea as the 3:34 train pulled out the station but an hour sitting in the station cafe was actually very pleasant. We ate and drank, she slept and I pondered the return to normal life.

I arrived home at 7pm to discover an immaculate house, happy family and, best of all, cake waiting for me!

What did I learn?

It is vitally important for me to do something that makes me excited and takes me away from normal life and people I know. To allow time to stretch outside the boundaries of school and activity hours and be mine alone to do with what I want.

I LOVE that this is a plan that will take me around 10 years to fulfil (it’s c. 1000km to Rome from Gd St Bernard) and that with minimal planning I can just up and go once or maybe even twice a year.

I also love that I adapted to the challenges and found ways to enjoy even the hard days. I worked really hard to keep walking, especially the first two days but decided that the payoff has to be somewhere comfortable to sleep. As Glennon Doyle puts it, and I quote loosely, “at the end of your life there will be no prize for she who suffers the most”. Allowing the actual hard part to challenge me is fine, torturing myself with lack of sleep and carrying insane amounts of kit is not.

I accepted those first few days of anxiety as something I do and can expect and work on for my next trip away.

Italy has a LOT of really really barky dogs, thankfully mostly behind fences. And Italians love dogs, especially ones with tiny doggy backpacks on. They also do not pick up poo very much.

My Italian lessons during lockdown were bloody well worth it. I can safely manage my way through basic day to day speaking and asking for help.

Next time, I am going super lightweight but still going to wing it and find somewhere to sleep on the hoof. It’s fun.

The Italy we regularly whizz by on the motorway is way more interesting and intriguing than we see from a car window. It’s worth visiting, especially as I was only a maximum of two hours from home (by car).

The anxiety draining away felt so lovely. Heavy, like the icy hand holding up my insides had melted and dropped them down to where they are supposed to be. But also light, because I found myself smiling and laughing at old memories I hadn’t thought about for a long time.

And lots more, but four days of my inner chat would bore even the selfless Via Francigena pilgrims of old…

Facts

Pixie, my super, hardcore mountain dog, and I walked approx 85km in four days. I am very proud of us both.

You can download the app “Via Francigena”.

You can also do the route by bike (but it is not considered as “worthy”).

There are quite a few bits on main roads which suck the life out of you, are hard on joints and were hot and uncomfortable for the dog, but they just serve to make the rest of it seem even more glorious.

Blister count: 1 proper one, managed with compeed and a day without the pack and two “hotspots” - not too bad for my princess feet!

**The red dot pulses with where you are and you can zoom right into see the route**