MOST FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

1. 1. What is a journey?
I’ve been asked this question so many times and I usually reply: “Hump your rucksack on your back, start walking and you will find out”. Even though I am sure this is the only possible answer because only direct experience can offer a living answer to our questions, I’d like to say a couple of words about what a journey is for me, without any pretence at being objective. For me it means to shoulder my soul, leave certainties and habits behind, reduce my baggage to a minimum, as well as my needs – whether inner or of a practical nature – and to walk off into the unknown, in which the unknown is not the path I am following or where I shall sleep, details I have already taken care of thanks to the Guide and maps, nor my relation to the places I pass through and the people who will greet me at the end of the day (part of a tapestry that has been woven for us by those who have set down this ideal route); the unknown is my real self, beyond the shell I have constructed for myself and which life, in all its facets, has moulded around me.

2. What difference is there between a journey and trekking?
From a practical point of view none. Every day I get up, pack my rucksack, walk off, absorb the beauty of the places I go through, relations with people met on the way or with my travelling companions; I arrive at my destination, rest and the next day start all over again. It is my attitude that changes, perhaps the “call” to go on a journey is different: it may lie quiescent in the wish to go trekking and becomes clearer as one walks along. Thus one goes off towards Santiago, or Rome, or… and whatever was meant to happen deep inside us does come about, and this is different for each of us, different and unique. It breaks my heart when people who have never had this experience say: “It’s the fashionable thing to do, people do it for sport, to have a cheap holiday.” They say these things because they presume to know what goes on in the hearts of others, whereas they often do not know what goes on theirs. I can’t agree because I certainly did not know why I had chosen to walk the roads of Spain, but I went off nevertheless, like so many others, with an open heart and confidence.

3. What difference is there between the historical journeys and that of Francis?
The most frequent comment I hear is:
“There is no point of arrival; usually a journey leads to the tomb of a saint; this journey should end in Assisi.”
They are right; there is a difference: this journey hopes to help the pilgrim to walk in the company of the “wayfarer Saint” and, by following in his footsteps and passing though some of the most important places of his human and spiritual life, to discover what that life of 800 years ago still has to say to us today. It is truly magical to reach Assisi, to sit in the warm darkness of the crypt of the Basilica: it feels like reaching the throbbing heart of the journey, but that is not our purpose. Bearing the delightful burden of such moments we walk on; indeed, only later, during our walk or when we have come home again, do we discover how it is his journeying that lends such life to his wasted bones. We don’t arrive, rather we carry on our journey, along paths or through life, with this “travelling companion” whom, step by step, we have come to know better, understanding why, like him, we started out on the journey; our own journey may be a short one, we may well be less radical in our choices than he, but for a few moments we will have perceived what he was seeking; thus we have been, like him, “pilgrims and strangers” with everything this means that is beautiful yet full of hardship.

4. What will be the practical difficulties?
Most of the journey is along paths; whoever has walked to Santiago will find the route uphill for long stretches, though these mountain paths are neither difficult not dangerous.
Some of the laps are rather long because there is no intermediate place to stop, for the time being.
But the wonderful solitude of the hills of Tuscany and Umbria are one of the points many people mention on their return. You certainly need previous experience; you have to know what it means to carry a rucksack on your back for 16 days; you need patience and that “joyous spirit of adventure” when, as will happen, you don’t find an arrow every few metres, like those on the road to Santiago: you will have to travel, guide in hand, to be sure you are following the right path.

5. Will I always find food and accommodation?
The accommodation mentioned in the Guide has been discovered so far by those who have already completed the journey and it gives you the comfort of knowing that at the end of the day you will have a roof over your head. Several new places have been added since the first edition of the Guide, and many more will come from the increasing number of pilgrims who walk this way. The only difficulty, so far, is that you should call the hostels, convents or whatever, before you get there, or better several days earlier.

6. How much will it cost?
This is not Spain. Life in Italy is more expensive and we do not yet have a network of “hostels for pilgrims” as the Spanish do. But day by day we are adding new places which will give a pilgrim a welcome for a few euros, or with a larger offering, according to one’s pocket; sometimes these are the private homes of hospitable people, ready to open their doors to the courteous presence of guests with “eyes full of the wind and rain of their walk”.