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What I most appreciate about very long days of walking is that the distance simplifies matters, tears the whole edifice down to its studs. Don’t think too much. Just wake up and go. And keep going. Obviously, too many days of that is a problem, for all kinds of different reasons. But two days? That’s like a juice cleanse for your feet. So leaving Faicchio was like being back in the US, rising at 4:30am, shoveling some carbs into my gullet, and setting forth under the cover of darkness. I sprinted ahead of dawn for as long as I could… Read more: Days 31-32 – Faicchio to Cassino – 114km

Would the anti-walking case like to present its rebuttal? With pleasure… I slipped out of Buonalbergo under the cover of darkness. I had screwed up some part of the conversation the night before. In my initial conversation with my host, she had asked what time I left that morning. It was a long stage, so I mentioned waking up at 5:30 and being on the road soon after. She was surprised, but I talked about how nice it is to see the sun rise and enjoy the cool of early morning. At some point, the conversation shifted to when I… Read more: Days 29-30 – Buonalbergo to Faicchio – 70km

The hardest part of long-distance walking isn’t the blisters, the foot pain, or the creaky knees. (Easy for me to say, as the lucky dude who has largely avoided all three.) It’s also not exposure to harsh elements, like torrential rain and wind, scorching heat, and soul-sucking humidity. It’s certainly not insect swarms, packs of mangy dogs, or cows filling the trail (in multiple ways). It’s not even steep, rocky descents, nor calf-straining climbs, or prolonged stretches along busy highways. No, the hardest part is trying to explain why this brings you joy to someone who finds the whole concept… Read more: Days 26-28 – San Giovanni Rotondo to Buonalbergo – 138km

Note: For complete coverage of my ongoing walk across Italy, consider subscribing to my Patreon. It’s cheap, beginning at just $3/month, and includes much prompter access to these daily write-ups, short videos that capture some of the scenery of the way, the complete archives of my US walk, and preview chapters from half of my upcoming Camino book. At every point of my life on pilgrimage, it has been ineluctably associated with legend. Whether the sites of visitation were attributed to Jesus, Peter and Paul, or James–all ostensibly “real” men, actual historical figures–the stories associated with them have to varying degrees… Read more: Day 25 – Monte Sant’Angelo-San Giovanni Rotondo – 28km

Note: For complete coverage of my ongoing walk across Italy, consider subscribing to my Patreon. It’s cheap, beginning at just $3/month, and includes much prompter access to these daily write-ups, short videos that capture some of the scenery of the way, the complete archives of my US walk, and preview chapters from half of my upcoming Camino book. There’s an easy, all-too-tempting way to frame these two days on the Via Francigena Sud’s coastal variant. It was the worst of pilgrimage. Leaving Trani early in the morning, after a most disappointing “included” breakfast, I found myself back on paved roads… Read more: Days 23-24 – Trani-Monte Sant’Angelo – 95km

Originally, my plan called for this to be a single stage, following a day off in Bari. Once I adjusted the days leading into Bari, though, allowing me to reach the city by midday on Sunday, it made more sense to split this over two stages, since accommodation seemed viable and I’ll have plenty of longer days coming up soon enough. In hindsight, maybe it should have been a single stage. The walk, it has to be said, was probably my least favorite of the walk thus far. That was particularly true of the first section, running from Bari to… Read more: Days 21-22 – Bari-Trani – 55km

For a couple weeks now, I’ve been fascinated with these little flowers that have been popping up–very short, maybe just clearing the ground by a couple inches, and with a crisp combination of white, purple, and yellow. They’re very pretty; that’s part of the allure, of course. I’m also struck, though, by where they grow: smack dab in the middle of footpaths, where all other competition has been eliminated. The downside of that, obviously enough, is that those footpaths have been cleared for a reason; feet, and the jackasses like me swinging them around, have trampled other plants into submission.… Read more: Days 19-20 – Alberobello-Bari – 79km

The whole reason that I decided to divert onto the Cammino Materano’s Via Ellenica variant in this section, instead of remaining on the Via Francigena Sud, was to see Alberobello. It’s rightly famous, but more on that in a bit. What I didn’t realize, though, was how remarkable all of the towns are in this section. As nice as it was, Carovigno was the least of the bunch, and it only got better from there. Here are some of the stories of the cities of this variant: Ostuni, even emerging from winter, is blazingly white, a beacon shining from a… Read more: Days 17-18 – Carovigno-Alberobello – 54km

There are days, I admit, when I approach the stage’s end and despair the lack of a hook, something to write about in regards to the day’s journey. In the US, I had an easier time of it, in large part because it was easier to line up audiobooks that suited a relevant topic or theme. That might seem surprising, given the abundance of history on hand in Italy, operating on an entirely different scale than what we have in North America, particularly given the available physical evidence, and certainly the peninsula has not been neglected by authors over the… Read more: Day 16 – Brindisi-Carovigno – 36km

I often think of beauty as something fragile, delicate, perpetually vulnerable to a destruction that would not only shatter the object itself, but the aesthetic quality along with it. And yet, nearly everything that is beautiful in and around Brindisi today has been trashed at some point. The bedraggled olive groves of past stages largely yield the ground to artichokes today, and they’re in fine form. As with broccoli earlier on this walk, I had never before seen a field flush with artichokes, nearly ready for harvest, so this was a revelation. In my mind, these are heavy enough to… Read more: Day 15 – Torchiarolo-Brindisi – 27km

What defines us, what stands out as our greatest source of pride, can all too often bring about our fall. It’s a slow, leisurely morning as I set forth from Cannole, complete with two hard boiled eggs and a large bag of dried figs, courtesy of Fabio and Lucia. I pause in Carbieno to grab a coffee, where I discover that throughout the Middle Ages this was the site of a popular fair, drawing attendees from all across the region, including a number of Greeks. Further afield, I encounter another extended stretch of wheel ruts, ground deep into the rock… Read more: Days 13 & 14 – Cannole-Torchiarolo – 69km

When I set out to walk across the USA, I had to rewire my brain and my feet. There’s a rhythm of life on pilgrimage, an utterly delightful one, that a trans-US walk can’t hope to replicate. The country is just too damn big. Admittedly, it wasn’t too dramatic a change on the East Coast, but the further west I proceeded, the greater the distances between places grew, and so too, consequentially, did the weight of my pack. Increasingly, my mindset each day revolved around the destination, as often the lone opportunity for resupply would come at that point. Sometimes,… Read more: Days 11 & 12 – Santa Maria di Leuca-Cannole – 81km

I first reached the end of the world in 2004. I was excited, but also a little sad. After all, Finisterre, Spain marked the conclusion of my first Camino leading students, and so as the waters churned below in an unrelenting fury, my thoughts threatened to do the same, until I took a breath and opted to savor the accomplishment, instead of ruing its completion. Over the years, I have returned to that end of the world plenty of times. It’s still a dramatic sight, for sure, but the edges are worn down by those repeat visits, by that growing… Read more: Day 10 – Specchia-Santa Maria di Leuca – 35km

Live long enough to become a hypocrite. A blessing or a curse? It depends upon each of us, I suppose, and how earnestly we live. That said, I’ve come to appreciate a certain strain of hypocrite in recent years, one willing to reconsider tough stances and modify their position when the available evidence changes. There’s a line between hypocrisy and learning, of course; it’s determined by how willing one is to accept that altered reality, as opposed to denying it into oblivion. It can be rough on the old pride, though. Here’s my hypocrisy of the moment. Younger me was… Read more: Day 9 – Gallipoli-Specchia – 42km

I’ve had two consistent companions as I follow the coast southward through Puglia, both reminders of more violent pasts. The less striking, by design, are the pillboxes, only poking a meter or so above the ground. Built during World War II to fend off an Allied invasion, these pop up every handful of kilometers, generally holding a geographically advantageous spot, with extended line of sight in both directions along the coast. More dramatic, by far, is the network of towers lining the Ionian, nearly all following the same formula–a single, stubby, square tower accessed around its midpoint by a majestic,… Read more: Day 8 – Porto Cesareo-Gallipoli – 35km

The people of Taranto are out in force on this Sunday morning, jogging along the coast in their brightest fitness apparel. By contrast, I’m lumbering along, still processing the croissant served at my breakfast that seemed to have been pumped full of a kilo of nutella. Add that to the list of things that shouldn’t be eaten by a man with a beard. It takes a while to escape the urban sprawl, which includes a large, fortified enclosure and multiple highway interchanges. Throughout, though, I’m joined by Cammino Materano waymarks, insisting that the Via Jonica–which I had been assured doesn’t… Read more: Days 6 & 7 – Taranto-Porto Cesareo – 85km

When I set off this morning, I anticipated the first walk of the young trip oriented singularly towards the destination. Aside from Matera, none of the towns I’ve stayed in thus far exercised much of a gravitational pull; beyond a trip to the supermarket, I didn’t have concrete plans in mind for any of those places. But Taranto? I was pumped for Taranto, one of the biggest cities in Southern Italy and a rich history to boot. It has been nice to kick off a long pilgrimage with low-urgency stages, allowing me to meander through the introductory kilometers while imposing… Read more: Day 5 – Crispiano-Taranto – 26km

It’s a funny thing; I’ve been thinking about the Cammino Materano for months now, if not years, and yet I’ve nearly completed my walk on it now, at least for the time being. There’s one firm exception to that statement; I’ll detour onto a variant of the Via Ellenica in order to visit Alberobello when I’m heading north on the Via Francigena Sud. And there’s a conceptual exception as well, in the sense that my walk southward over the coming days is inspired by what will eventually become the Via Jonica, another part of the Materano’s spiderweb network of trails… Read more: Tour d’Italia, Days 3 & 4 – Castellaneta-Crispiano – 56km

A walk across Italy offers an excellent excuse–not that any such excuse is required–to spend time rereading Italy’s greatest writer, Italo Calvino. So my journey began with If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, which felt more than appropriate for the occasion. The novel’s conceit is a joyride through postmodernist narration, with the author first addressing the reader directly before yielding to the text of the novel proper, only to discover that a printing error has resulted in the replacement of the intended text with a Polish one. Further hijinks ensue. The two readers of the novel, needless to say,… Read more: Tour d’Italia, Days 1 & 2 – Matera-Castellaneta – 70km

From the moment that I decided to step away from my teaching role and commit to at least a couple of years of walking and writing, I knew, of course, that I would finish the US walk. At the same time, though, I also had this walk through Italy top of mind, to the extent that they functioned as a sort of paired set. There are a few reasons that Italy held such prominence for me. First, and simplest of all, it has been a long time since I walked in Italy. After I led my first student group on… Read more: Tour d’Italia, Day 0 – Matera