My wife and I walked the Via Francigena from Switzerland to Rome back in 2008.
During the seven weeks we took to reach Rome, we met 12 other pilgrims; three women from Switzerland and four Germans walking a short section in Valle d Aosta, a young German guy rushing to get to Rome in four weeks from Aosta, a woman from Rome who supposedly had been walking from Santiago on her way to the holy city, two other Canadians and finally an Italian from Parma, who we walked with, during the last four days into Rome.
From time to time groups of cyclists passed us, especially when we got closer to Rome.
We also met Alberto who had been tasked to map out an alternate set of paths that would take pilgrims away from the busy and dangerous roads. We would learn later that these planned future changes were already "a work in progress" meaning different communities were in fact changing the exist paths as we walked them, sometimes ripping up old signs, sometimes adding new signs and more often leaving nothing to give you any indication of what was what.
It obviously resulted in some challenging days, getting lost and spending countless hours backtracking and/or taking unplanned alternate routes to reach our daily destination.
More often that not, my wife and I spent the days and evenings alone, just the two of us. But occasionally, we did get to share some special moments with one of those dozen special pilgrims that briefly entered our lives.
The Via Francigena is not the
Camino Frances, and probably it will never be like it.
