Tom Lethbridge is a student and pilgrim from Britain and the brother of our Open Road editor, Nico.

I remembered meeting a woman who had walked from Glasgow to Rome. My dad took her in when she walked past our house. She’d come for dinner and told us about it. I always walked as a kid with my dad, but I’d never thought about doing a pilgrimage. I wanted to do something alone that would challenge me, so I decided to walk the same route she had done, the Via Francigena. It runs from Canterbury to Rome. I didn’t have long enough to do the whole thing, so I started at the Great St Bernard Pass, on the border of Switzerland and Italy. It was a thousand kilometres to Rome from there.

I began in July. It was already hot, but it was cooler at the top. I met a German pilgrim on my first day. It was just me and him in this tiny alpine village. He had a full-time job and was basically depressed. He’d had enough and just wanted to walk. It was good to speak to another pilgrim. I wasn’t worried, but I had expected it to be a lot of very religious people. That wasn’t the case at all. People were more spiritual, or had more of a hippie kind of vibe than a religious one. We walked together for a few days.

Then my brother joined me in the Aosta Valley. It was awesome but tough going. The route took us up through the mountains rather than along the bottom of the valley, where the main road is. There was a lot of up and down. Most of the houses were deserted, probably abandoned for 40 or 50 years. No one was really about. Still, you had that sense of following in the footsteps of ancient pilgrims, just your possessions and your feet. At one point, we had to shelter from a storm in a cave. 

All sorts of people took us in. We stayed in a monastery with a priest early on and he put us in touch with other people, including a hermit who lived on the edge of a mountain. She picked us up from the path and drove like an absolute nutter to her hermitage on the mountainside. 

We were in the Alps for about a week. Then we descended into the Po Valley and Lombardy. You could see the mountains behind you, and in front, it was just flat. A lot of people skip the Po Valley. There’s nothing really there, just two weeks of unbelievable heat, mosquitoes, and flat farmland, miles and miles of farmland. But actually, I think those two weeks were some of the best parts. I really felt properly alone.

I remember seeing the first bit of incline after two weeks. I really stopped and noticed it. It was just a ten-meter-high mound, but it was the first sign the landscape was changing. I slowly ascended into the Apennines following the routes used by partisans to shelter prisoners during the Second World War.

I met an Iranian-Italian guy there and walked with him for five days. Although people were always friendly, I couldn't really speak Italian so I hadn’t been able to have proper conversations, just quick exchanges like “Buon Cammino.” He did speak Italian, so could understand people’s recommendations. One of the best tips came from a local who told us about a Roman bridge just off the track. Underneath it was this waterfall, so we scrambled down and swam in it. The water was clear and fresh. It felt like swimming in the Fountain of Youth.

We came out of the Apennines and reached the coast. A music teacher and her daughter had us to stay and took us out for dinner. With the big bag and walking boots, people instantly knew you were on the route and would stop to offer food or water, or just be friendly. You didn’t really ever have to worry about where you were going to stay. There was this optimism that things would work out that I’ve never really felt anywhere else.

I passed through the marble quarries of Carrara, where Michelangelo chose his marble by hand; it’s where the marble for David came from. I remember looking up to my left and thinking it was snow on the mountains. 

We passed through Massa, and after about three or four days, we arrived in Lucca. I met an Israeli pilgrim. She’d done the Camino in Spain and then come to Italy with someone she’d met. I ended up walking with her for five days. It was always very easy to meet and walk with other pilgrims. Everyone was heading for Rome, and after spending a lot of time alone, people were happy for company.

Soon, that undulating Tuscan landscape came into its own. I stayed in San Gimignano and Monteriggioni, both old walled cities, in donativo hostels where you donate what you can and you’d get a bed and a place to wash your clothes. At that point, there were lots of walkers on the route. I ended up part of a big group of about ten people, all sorts: an ex-Italian paratrooper on his 53rd Camino, an 87-year-old Frenchman walking from Paris to Rome, this English bloke, who had started walking from Canterbury after a sticky breakup. There was a lot of talk about pilgrimage — about what it does to the soul, and how emotional it is to walk every day, end up somewhere new each night.

By complete chance, when I reached Siena, the Palio horse race was on so I stayed to watch it. I was in the middle of the Piazza del Campo, in the packed crowd they call the palco. There were 40,000 of us crammed into this ring waiting for the race to begin, people leaning out of the windows above. I met an Italian a few days later who told me each contrada (district) gives their jockey a pot of money, they try and bribe each other for starting position. They haggle at the start line until they agree who goes first. Amazingly, the Lupa contrada won for the first time in seventy years. It was wild. Pure emotion. Just floods of tears. Everyone around me was in bits. 

I kept heading south towards Rome, through more classic Tuscan landscapes: vineyards, pine trees, those big open skies. By that point, the path had become much quieter. You’d pass cyclists now and then and they’d often look out for you. I remember one day, I was worried about heatstroke and had ducked into a bush for some shade. A cyclist passed and stopped. He was 18 and had just been given his bike for his birthday. He was cycling to Naples, where he was born, and he gave me some aloe vera water. Just a small thing, but it saved the day.

Later, I met a man and his daughter. He walked the Camino de Santiago every year and had written all these songs about pilgrimage. They had this tradition of tying shells—the symbol of the pilgrim—on trees along the way. The idea was that if they ever came back, they might spot one again, but in the meantime, it was a sign of good luck for anyone who passed. They made me a little charm from beads on a string.

I’d expected to be more tired as I got closer to Rome, but you get into a rhythm. You’re exhausted in the evenings, but each morning, you wake up refreshed and ready to walk again. The last few days weren’t great—lots of suburbs and sprawl. But I made it to St. Peter’s. You’re allowed to skip the queues and go straight through to the Basilica. They even give you a certificate from the Vatican. They were very open-minded about it not being a religious pilgrimage.

That moment was overwhelming. I just sat there for an hour thinking about all the places I’d passed through, everyone I’d met. A lot of people had done loads of these walks. For many, it becomes addictive. It’s ruined some lives, someone joked. I get why. When you’re home, in winter, you just long to be out walking again. The old pilgrims used to say, “The real Camino begins when you get home.” For me, it gave me this deep sense that everything would be okay. That wherever you are, you’ll find a bed, food, water. Someone will look after you. That trust in the road, in other people—it stays with you. 

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Masthead

Editor-in-chief — Andrew Fedorov

Rails Editor — Connor McFarland

Altitude Editor — Matt Gu

Open Road Editor — Nico Lethbridge

Deputy Rails Editor — Connor Noble