Days 7 & 8 – Garlasco to Bobbio, Italy – 97km
I left solid, charted ground for something far more uncertain. The Via Francigena through the rice paddies may not be its finest kilometers, but it’s stable and reliable. If anything, it offers too many services, tempting me constantly to go over budget. Over these last 25 kilometers, I fended off the lure of the handful […]
Day 6 – Robbio to Garlasco, Italy – 35km
A couple days ago, in Santhià, I was visiting the Chiesa di Sant’Agata in the center. It’s a lovely neoclassical structure, more hulking than graceful, but it’s not entirely devoid of the latter. An older man stood outside as I entered, and he followed me in soon after. He tailed me for a bit, but […]
Tour d’Italia, Day 5 – Santhià to Robbio, Italy – 46km
The route is drunk. Not just a little tipsy, but straight up blottoed. It looks bad enough on a map, zigzagging north and south across the SP11. Heck, there are two points when it heads west on this ostensibly eastward-moving march. Blame the rice paddies, not the route-makers. These swampy, boggy grounds, and I’ll use […]
Tour d’Italia, Day 4 – Ivrea to Santhià, Italy – 37km
I pride myself on my stealthy extrication from crowded pilgrim dorms in the early morning, so I bore a thoroughly shamefaced expression as I descended the stairs, after the bedroom door caught on the floor midway and then shrieked as I pushed it the necessary distance. I’ve thought for years about carrying a can of […]
Tour d’Italia, Part 2 – Days 2 & 3 – Aosta to Ivrea, Italy – 84km
There are only so many viable ways to cross the Alps; it makes sense that those few privileged pathways would suffer for their accessibility. And indeed, my whole walk over the Grand Saint Bernard Pass and through the Aosta Valley has followed one scene after another of remarkable carnage, along with strategic hilltops dotted with […]
Tour d’Italia, Part 2 – Day 1 – Bourg-Saint-Pierre to Aosta, Italy – 41km
I sprang to life at 3am. I negotiated with consciousness for 15 minutes before throwing in the towel and rising. Fortunately, the place had a kettle. My rising wasn’t solely a function of the curious mixture of jet lag and adrenaline that announces each new walk; rather, the support team for a group of priests […]
Tour d’Italia, Part 2 – Day 0 – Bourg-Saint-Pierre
Even Lake Geneva has an off-day sometimes. And admittedly, most places in the world aspire to be Lake Geneva on an off-day. Regardless, I’ve been here enough to know better. In place of a shimmering luminescence, the lake’s surface was dull and desultory. The wall of mountains launching skyward across the way proved oddly inscrutable, […]