A last wander along the shoreline before we turn inland to walk across the mountains and plains of Sicily on the Magna Via Francigena. Fishermen mending their nets. A large-scale mural; a memorial to the magistrates Falcone and Borsellino, both assassinated by the Mafia. It is bold in its presence and tender in its rendering.
Waves breaking on the rocky shore. Pebbles sighing. Ferries plying the waters of the Adriatic. Fishing boats out at sea. We’re walking the Via Francigena Sud, a 950-kilometre route following the ancient Appian Way southwards from Rome. After walking through Lazio and across the mountains of Campania, we arrive in the port city of Bari. From here, we’ll hug the coastline until we reach Santa Maria di Leuca on the southernmost tip of the Salento peninsula, where the Adriatic and the Ionian Sea meet.
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We wake to the deep silence of the contemplative Monastery of Santa Catarina. There’s heavy rain forecast and it comes early. The beautiful Trebulani Mountains are lost to us. We’re walking the Via Francigena Sud, a 950 km route following the Appian Way southwards from Rome. After 10 days in Lazio, we turn inland towards the mountainous Campania.
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One fine spring morning, we stepped out to walk the Via Francigena Sud. It’s a 950-kilometre route following the ancient Appian Way from Rome to Santa Maria di Leuca. Emperors, poets and popes have gone before us, as have pilgrims and crusaders bound for the Holy Land.
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Late one summer, we set out to walk the Via degli Dei, an ancient pathway travelled since the time of the Etruscans. The 130-kilometre-long path crosses the beautiful Apennines, linking Bologna with Florence. It threads through forests, across mountain ridges and in and out of old Italian villages.
Pagan divinities give names to the mountains that the route crosses; Adonis, Jupiter, Venus and Lua, the goddess of atonement. They also give the route its name; the Path of Gods.
Our Thames Path walk takes us from the source of the river in the rolling Cotswold Hills, through historic cities, quaint villages and beguiling English countryside before passing through the heart of London and finishing at the Thames flood barrier. It’s a meandering journey of 185 miles (300 kilometres).
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In Tuscany, all the roads to Rome converge. After walking by ourselves for 1,600 kilometres, we become part of a loose band of pilgrims that coalesces, embracing solitude by day and sociability in the evenings.
After we leave the beautiful mountains of the Alps behind, we descend through the foothills of Piedmont and enter the flatlands of the Po Valley.
For hundreds of kilometres, we walk among flooded rice paddies and follow canals, past abandoned and now derelict Cascine, farm complexes where peasant families lived and worked their entire life under the control of the farm owner.
We walk the Via Francigena as it follows the bloodied battlelines of the Western Front. For hundreds of kilometres, almost every village we pass through bears the scars of the death and destruction of WW1.
Out from Calais, we walk through a landscape still hollowed out by war. Shell holes, deep craters and bunkers collapsing onto the beach, the sand tilting them, the sea slowly subsuming them.
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Australia has a federal election, and we want our vote to count. So much so that we walk 200 kilometres, following the coast from Calais to the seaside village of Wissant before turning inland and continuing on through the rolling green countryside of northern France to Arras.
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