A ship in harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.
- John A. Shedd, Salt from my attic (1928)
Time to set sail again! Though this ship, this time, sets sail far from the sea, amid the rice paddies of the landlocked northern Italian plains. This year's Long Walk begins in Vercelli, crossroads of the ancient pilgrimage roads to Rome and to Santiago de Compostela.
Ten years ago, on October 3, 2016, I started out from my home in Chiavari, Liguria, Italy to walk to Santiago and then on to Muxia and Finisterre, on the Atlantic Ocean - at one time the end of the known world, for Europeans.
It took me 112 days to walk a total of 2883 kilometres, averaging just over 25 kilometres per day. Not all at once: I divided the walk into four sections, over four years, completed in June 2019.
On that first Long Walk to Santiago, I followed the shortest and most logical trails from my hometown to my destination: Via della Costa along the Ligurian Coast to the French border, Via Aurelia/GR653A to Arles, Via Tolosana/GR653 through Toulouse and over the Pyrenees at Col de Somport, then the Camino Aragonese to Puente La Reina, where I joined up with the Camino Francés, the most traditional and frequently travelled walking route across Spain.
But even before I reached the end, I was already planning my next Camino de Santiago. At every crossroads, I wondered what was down the path not taken. Alternative routes opened up along the way, and I vowed to come back and walk them some time.
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| Here, the GR787 would have taken me to Carcassonne... |
Ten years later, that time has come! After allowing myself to be "distracted" by various Roads to Rome for several years, I am ready to go back to the Way of Saint James - Chemin de Compostelle - Camino de Santiago.
After contemplating several possible routes, I came up with a rough plan to walk from Vercelli along the branch of the Via Francigena that crosses the Alps at Monginevro/Montgenèvre, then follow the Via Domitia/GR653D to Arles. From there I hope to hike along footpaths and cycling routes across the Camargue to Beziers, where I will join the Voie du Piémont/GR78 to follow the foothills of the French side of the Pyrenees through Carcassonne and Lourdes to Saint-Jean-Pied-du-Port, the traditional starting point for walking the Camino Francés. But, having already walked that route - which is now severely overcrowded, walked by more than half a million pilgrims every year - I hope to continue northwards on the Voie de la Nive Bidassoa to Hendaye, on the Atlantic Coast, and take the Camino del Norte from there.
That's the rough plan, and it looks great on the map - we shall see what it turns out to look like in reality!
My short-term goal is to get over the Alps before it's too late, and the pass is covered in snow. I'll see how far I can get this autumn, before the days become too cold and dark; then I'll come home for the winter, and pick up where I left off in Spring 2027. Hoping to complete the walk within the year, as 2027 is an Año Xacobeo, a holy year of Saint James when the Holy Door on Santiago Cathedral is open. It would be a fitting end to this Long Walk, after arriving in Rome during the 2025 Jubilee!
I am starting out on this Long Walk in the company of my friend and long-time walking partner Mariella, who now lives mostly on the Ligurian coast near me but is originally from Vercelli - our starting point! After taking a couple of trains and a bus to get there, we were happy to see her husband Antonio, who had come to pick us up at the train station and made us some delicious minestrone for dinner. We took their dog Argo out for an evening walk around town and then retired to our rooms in their home in the former sacristy of a church right in the old town centre.
Mariella and Antonio used to dabble in antiques dealing, and still enjoy travelling to visit antiques markets in various towns all over Italy, and so their home is not only in an ancient building with centuries of history, but packed with antiques of all kinds.
I slept in the bedroom of their son, now in his 30s and living in Genoa, with a view of the church belltower.
A bit of history: Vercelli, Saint Eusebius, and a couple of very old books
Vercelli was first settled by the Ligurians four thousand years ago. They were followed by a Celtic population, which may explain the town's name: one theory is that it was originally Wehr-Celt, meaning "fortress of the Celts." The Romans took over the fort in the year 101 B.C., and by A.D. 49 Vercelli was a municipium inhabited by Roman citizens, with roads, monuments, public baths, an aqueduct, a theatre and an amphitheatre.
Vercelli officially converted to Christianity in A.D. 313, along with the rest of the Roman Empire, by edict of the Emperor Constantine. In A.D. 345 Pope Julius I consecrated the city's first bishop, Eusebius, now the patron saint of Vercelli. Eusebius lived to be 88 - an age rarely achieved in those days - and during his long life he had occasion to travel far and wide - though not always as a matter of choice! He was in fact exiled first to Syria, then to Cappadocia and Egypt between the years 355 and 360 by the Roman Emperor Constantius II. A supporter of the Arian version of Christianity, Constantius exiled all bishops who refused to agree with what later came to be known as the Arian heresy. This non-trinitarian theology holds that Christ is not eternal like God, but was made or begotten by him at a later point, and that the Son is therefore subordinate to the Father; it basically denies the divinity of Christ. As Arius himself stated, "if the Father begat the Son, then he who was begotten had a beginning in existence, and from this it follows there was a time when the Son was not."
Ordinary people didn't really understand what the controversy was all about, because, then as now, they didn't bother to think too hard about such fine distinctions of theology. But the Arian belief system was adopted by a number of Roman emperors, and by Goth and Vandal warlords upon their conversion to Christianity. By 325, the theological dispute had become significant enough that the Emperor Constantine called an assembly of bishops, the First Council of Nicaea, which condemned Arius's doctrine and formulated the original Nicene Creed of 325. But Constantine's son Constantius II supported the Arians, and attempted to reverse the Nicene creed, exiling all the bishops who adhered to it - including Eusebius of Vercelli.
Upon the death of Constantius in 361, his successor Emperor Julian rehabilitated the bishops who had been exiled, and so Eusebius was able to return to his post in Vercelli, where he resumed his service as bishop until his death ten years later.
It may well have been Bishop Eusebius who ordered the production of the Codex Vercellensis Evangeliorum, the oldest existing manuscript of the gospels in Old Latin, at some time between 345 and 371. Most of the book's pages are in poor condition and scarcely legible, as the volume was used for swearing oaths in medieval times, meaning that people kept putting their hands on it!
The volume is now kept in the Biblioteca Capitolare, the library of the Cathedral of Vercelli, one of Italy's most prestigious libraries. This venerable institution also houses the Vercelli Book, a late 10th-century parchment manuscript produced in southeast England. It is one of the four oldest books in the English language, and the only one to be kept outside of the UK. Containing 23 sermons and six poems in the Anglo-Saxon language, the manuscript was most likely brought from England to the Hospitale di Santa Brigida, a hostel in Vercelli founded in the 11th century specifically for British pilgrims on the Via Francigena pilgrimage road to Rome. You can view it online in a digital edition here, but don't expect it to make easy bedtime reading! The transcription starts out like this:
