205. Walking the Walk

I don’t consider myself a spiritual person. I don’t even understand what people mean when they say they are. But there is something about doing one of those long pilgrimage walks, the most famous being the Camino de Santiago through Spain and France, that has always intrigued me.

A while back, I learned about the Via Francigena, a major pilgrimage route with records dating back to the 700s, going from Canterbury, England, to Rome, and then continuing south through Puglia and on to the Holy Land. When I realized that the route passes only 70 miles away from Bologna, I quickly added it to my must-do list. We figured out that we could take an hour-long train ride to Fidenza, a small town that the Via goes right through. We spent the night there on Friday, so that we could be up bright and early Saturday morning and start walking.

A typically immaculate small town hotel for $63. They even threw in breakfast and a quote from Charlie Chaplin: “A day without a smile is a day lost.”

First stop was the Duomo, where, as is my custom in Italian churches, I stopped in and lit a candle for the good health of my loved ones. Is that spiritual? Religious? Superstitious?

From there, we hit the trail, and walked nearly five miles south through the lovely countryside towards Rome. Then we turned around and came back.

Lovely wildflowers and rolling farmlands along our route through Emilia-Romagna, considered the “Breadbasket of Italy.”

Hardly the real deal, which includes camping out or sleeping in bunkhouses with other pilgrims along the way. The other pellegrini we saw looked like regular hikers, or were locals walking their dogs or out for their morning constitutionals. One man, who had an olive branch from Palm Sunday tucked into his backpack, looked like he may have been doing the walk for religious reasons.

Was it fun? An adventure? A lovely walk? Yes, yes, yes. Was I glad I did it? Yes! Did I find it a profoundly meaningful experience? Mostly, I found myself thinking about how many steps I was accumulating and how many calories I was burning. My father always said, “You take yourself with you.” I guess even for a tradition that has survived nearly 1500 years, ensuring a spiritually transformative experience would be a heavy lift. But even still, I can’t think of a better way to spend an Easter weekend.