Friday 5 June 2025 – Our last day of walking, then. 16km, eh? On roads through Rome’s suburbs? In 30°C heat? Have you taken leave of your senses?
For some reason, the 30° heat here has been, at least for me, more enervating than the 35-40° heat we encountered when we walked the Camino Francés. I was only two years younger then – can those two years have made such a dramatic difference to my tolerance for higher temperatures? Except that I haven’t done any cycling for those two years, I’d say my fitness now is about the same as it was then. But I’ve found the conditions for the last 100km, since Montefiascone, to be really quite oppressive. People we’ve talked to seemed to think it was unseasonably hot, too.
Anyway, the practical upshot of considering the lunacy of walking the final 16km was that Jane Made A Plan. This is how the day unfolded.
Yes, it says “Walking” at the top, but I cannot tell a lie: we took the train. It was a short walk from the hotel to the local station, and a €1 (each) fare to get us to a station called Appiano, which offers a viewpoint of the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, whence we walked into Vatican City to get our Testimonia.
The train ride provided one of those coincidences that leaven the weary flatness of life. We knew that the French couple we’d chatted to at Monte Gelato the day before yesterday (and then some more that evening in Campagnano, as it happened) were planning to take the train towards Rome because they, too, were finding the heat oppressive. Astonishingly, when we stepped onto the train – there they were! Same train, same carriage, same seating area – a very unlikely combination. They got off a couple of stops before us so that they could walk through a nature reserve as part of their final day, whereas we wimped out and detrained a little nearer the final destination.
At Appiano, one can take a short walk along paths which include the cursed strada bianca
to a belvedere, offering this view:
The dome of St. Peter’s is clearly visible and you can make out the walls of Vatican City, too. From there, a path leads to a coffee bar
which, had we known it, was almost back at Appiano station. We refreshed ourselves with a coffee and then walked down the winding path that takes one towards St. Peter’s. By and large, the route was pretty much standard crowded-city-on-a-hot-sweaty-day, but there was some slightly classy graffiti to be seen.
Getting round the outside of the Vatican City walls
made us sharply aware of the contrast between the almost total solitariness of the countryside we’d traversed and the realities of life in a capital city, which is not only a pilgrimage destination but a popular tourist site. There was lots of traffic and noise, and tour groups everywhere;
tourist tat shops ubiqutious;
and, as for getting into St. Peter’s Square, where the entry is through the right-hand arch?
It looked daunting, but Jane did the sort of thing that wouldn’t have occurred to me and Asked The Way. Anyone who can show a credenziale can skip the line!
So we followed the gent in the dog collar and actually whizzed through. There was a security check, and I’m glad I’d decided to leave my penknife in my suitcase, but within a few minutes we were through and into St. Peter’s “Square”. There is a special entrance for pilgrims
which leads to its own security lane, past a selfie point
and towards the place where volunteers were awaiting us to give us our certificates. It was a bit of a zoo,
as lots of other things are on offer in that corridor, but we had a very warm welcome from the two volunteers who were providing testimonia and timbri. Having got these, it then transpired that we were free to enter the Basilica itself, with no further queuing!
Well, almost.
Just as we were about to mount the steps, another volunteer held us back and closed off access. He explained that it would only be for a few moments, but there were some special processional groups who were preparing to enter the Basilica, and they took priority, which is fair enough.
Actually, three processions went through, one of which sang as they went, which I thought was a nice touch. Meanwhile
we waited until the nice man let us through, when we charged into the Basilica!
Well, not really.
Here’s what it was like to get into the church.
I suppose it’s inevitable when you are at the centre of a global religion with 1.2 billion adherents that there will be crowds. Some of them might even be Catholics. Inside the Basilica, magnificence is in plentiful supply,
as are people.
There’s a slow and steady shuffle of punters, all waving cameras in the air and taking selfies. The place is extraordinary, but too big and too crowded to do it any kind of photographic justice. So we shuffled in and round and marvelled at the place and then shuffled out in search of refreshment. We caught a change in the Swiss Guard
passed a statue, the “Angels Unawares” boat by Canadian artist Timothy P. Schmalz, dedicated to the world’s migrants and refugees,
and tried to capture a photo of the arena outside
but it’s too big (is it always full of chairs, or is this for something special?) and I think that if I’d launched the drone there might have been comment. So we took a last view as we left St.Peter’s Basilica.
There’s a cafe nearby, but it seemed they didn’t want us to invade their privacy, and the streets nearby are loaded with eateries and drinkeries
which we thought would be crowded and probably expensive, so we decided that it might be better to head off to our hotel and see if we could check in.
Our accommodation was the Dharma Style, which is near the central station, so it was straightforward to get to on the Metro. Our room was, indeed, available, but our bags hadn’t yet arrived (probably stuck in some ghastly traffic jam somewhere). So we headed out into the street where there was immediately a restaurant that was thronged with people. We decided to lunch there, even though it showed pictures of the food, and enjoyed a good lunch (including gin!) before retiring to the hotel to rest and recuperate for the rigours of the journey home.
For tomorrow we go from Rome to home, or that’s our plan; we’ve yet to see what BA’s plan for us is, but we’re sanguine that we will have a joyful homecoming having walked 394.47km of the Via Francigena and nearly 100km of related sightseeing.
As an experience, it’s been significantly different from walking the Camino in Spain, which after a moment’s thought would be bleedin’ obvious: hundreds of thousands of pilgrims a year enables and sustains an infrastructure that hundreds of pilgrims a year can’t. The walking here in Italy has been tougher than almost all of the Camino paths, and some of the scenery more spectacular as a result. The heat towards the end made the experience somewhat more trying than I would have liked; and I am looking forward to getting back to a country which serves hot coffee in large cups; but we’ve enjoyed this big adventure and all the small adventures that have gone to make it the experience it has been. We have plans for some other long walks, and you can rest assured that I will use these pages to rabbit on about them; I hope you will stay in touch to read the result.
