To my right were the Apuan Alps, scarred a brilliant, blinding white from two thousand years of continuous marble mining. To my left, just a few miles across the coastal plain, lay the Tyrrhenian Sea. Directly beneath my boots was the reality of the modern pilgrim: sun-baked asphalt, a narrow, crumbling shoulder, and the persistent, high-stakes attentiveness required to avoid being clipped by passing Fiat Pandas and the near-silent whir of electric Citroëns. This was not the rolling, cypress-dotted dreamscape of a Renaissance painting; this was the rugged, industrial edge of northern Tuscany, a landscape defined more by labor than by leisure. I was walking a specific, often-overlooked stretch of the Via Francigena, the ancient medieval pilgrimage route that stretches approximately 1,200 miles from the Cathedral of Canterbury in England to the Tomb of St. Peter in Rome. My journey took me from the inland town of Camaiore toward Sarzana, cutting through the heart of Carrara. In the travel world, this is often referred to as "gritty Tuscany." It is a far cry from the manicured vineyards of Chianti or the golden hills of the Val d’Orcia that dominate postcards and Instagram feeds. In Carrara, the primary "monuments" are the massive cubes of Statuario marble, hoisted by gargantuan cranes and sitting in dusty open lots like unclaimed luggage. These stones, some weighing dozens of tons, were waiting for transport to become high-end countertops in bougie kitchen remodels across London or New York—a far more likely fate than becoming the next David or Pietà. I had come to Italy to meet a close friend at the 100-mile mark of her own ambitious trek. For her, this walk was the centerpiece of a hard-earned sabbatical, a slow-motion transit across a country she loved. I had agreed to join her for the next 50 miles or so, a commitment made with the breezy nonchalance of someone who hadn’t truly looked at a topographical map or a local traffic report. I was along for the ride, regardless of the terrain. If I had pictured anything, it was the idyllic Tuscany she had been describing in her breathless voice memos for weeks: the white gravel roads of the Crete Senesi, the volcanic cone of Radicofani, and the medieval towers of San Gimignano. I expected the "Under the Tuscan Sun" fantasy; I received the industrial reality of the Apuans. The Via Francigena is a formidable undertaking. Historically, it follows the path recorded by Sigeric the Serious, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who traveled to Rome in 990 AD to receive his pallium from the Pope. While the Camino de Santiago in Spain has become a global phenomenon, the Via Francigena remains its quieter, more demanding Italian cousin. At a standard pace of 12 to 15 miles per day, the entire route takes about 90 days to complete. Very few people attempt the whole journey in one go. Instead, most "pilgrims" choose a specific section—usually the scenic stretches between Lucca and Siena—and return year after year to chip away at the total distance. Many others opt only for the final 100 kilometers (about 62 miles) leading into Vatican City. This is the minimum distance required on foot to earn the Testimonium, the official Vatican-stamped certificate of completion. Consequently, the final stages of the path are often crowded, bustling with "instant pilgrims" seeking the spiritual credential. By contrast, the stretch I was walking was the "B-side" of the record—the deeper cut that lacks the radio-friendly appeal of the hits but offers a more honest look at the soul of the region. My previous experience with long-distance walking had been on the Camino de Santiago, where I traveled a portion of the route with the renowned chef and humanitarian José Andrés. That experience had been a masterclass in the "genteel" school of pilgrimage: a leisurely pace, long lunches that turned into wine-soaked seminars on local agriculture, and even longer dinners in historic paradores. I have long since made peace with my place on the hiking spectrum. While I respect the asceticism of the mountain hut and the freeze-dried meal, I am unashamedly a fan of putting on clean clothes at night and exploring a town as a tourist. In the culture of the Camino and the Via, there is a specific, slightly pejorative term for people like me: turigrino. A linguistic mashup of turista (tourist) and peregrino (pilgrim), it describes those who want the spiritual exercise of the walk but the comforts of a boutique hotel and a cold glass of Franciacorta at the end of the day. To the "Type 2 fun" purists—those who believe travel is only valid if it involves a certain degree of suffering—the turigrino is a lightweight. But I have always found that a crisp glass of Italy’s finest sparkling wine tastes significantly better after twenty miles of dust and diesel fumes. However, the "full turigrino treatment" was not to be on this trip. The morning before my flight, my friend called with logistical bad news. For the first 100 miles of her trip, she had been "slackpacking"—a glorious system where a local service ferries your heavy luggage from hotel to hotel, leaving you to walk with nothing but a daypack containing water and snacks. But for the stretch between Camaiore and Sarzana, no such service existed. The infrastructure for tourism on this industrial coast simply hadn’t caught up to the burgeoning popularity of the trail. I was forced to pivot mentally from "Type 2 Light" (walking with gummy bears) to "Type 2 Heavy" (carrying my entire life on my back). With only twelve hours before my flight and my professional hiking packs locked in a distant storage unit, I grabbed the only thing I had: a specialized running hydration vest I had never worn. It was designed for ultra-marathoners, not multi-day trekkers. It was missing a chest strap, and its storage capacity was "ambitious" at best. For the first two days, I loathed that pack with a visceral intensity. By day three, however, I entered the Stockholm-syndrome phase of gear ownership. I accepted its flaws the way one accepts a recurring blister. It became a part of me, a nylon parasite that I eventually grew to tolerate, if not love. The most striking aspect of the "unfashionable" stretch of a famous walk is the solitude. Over the course of three days, we encountered perhaps six other hikers. In a country like Italy, which has struggled profoundly with overtourism in cities like Venice and Florence, this felt like a miracle. We were walking through towns where people were simply living their lives—hanging laundry, fixing scooters, arguing over espresso—unbothered by the presence of tourists. The data reflects this growing but still niche interest. Even in 2025, which was a designated "Jubilee Year" in Rome and saw record-breaking numbers for the Via Francigena, only about 12,000 people collected a Testimonium. The European Association of the Via Francigena estimated that roughly 100,000 people set foot on some portion of the 2,000-kilometer route throughout the entire year. To put that in perspective, the Camino de Santiago issued over 530,000 Compostelas in the same period. While the Via is growing rapidly—completions have roughly doubled every two years recently—it is starting from such a small baseline that it remains a rare sanctuary of quietude in a crowded world. In Carrara, the landscape forces you to confront the cost of beauty. Your mind wanders in two directions: you wonder what these majestic mountains would look like if they hadn’t been hollowed out over two millennia, their white scars visible even from space. But then, you realize the world would be devoid of the David, London’s Marble Arch, and the Pantheon’s interior. The "gritty" scenery is the birthplace of the world’s most refined aesthetics. Even on the asphalt, beauty presented itself in small, sharp bursts. My memories of the trip are sensory rather than panoramic. I remember the scent of bay laurel crushed between my fingers, smelling like a Sunday roast about to happen. I remember chewing on fresh-foraged mint found along a drainage ditch, and the surprising carrot-like taste of Queen Anne’s lace. Blackberries seemed to materialize on the vine exactly when my blood sugar began to dip, and I saw my first pomegranate still hanging from a tree, heavy and regal. There were chestnuts in their spiny husks—terrestrial sea urchins—and ancient olive groves that had been dropping pits on this path for centuries. There is a profound magic in the longevity of an olive tree; it suggests a continuity of human effort that makes a single afternoon’s walk feel like a very small thing. And then, there was the food. On this "B-side" stretch, dining required zero reservations and zero contention with other foreigners. In Camaiore, we feasted on baccalà and a rich primo of cacciagione (game meat). In Seravezza, we found a rustic seafood risotto, salted as aggressively as the sea air and all the better for it. In Massa, we discovered curchua—maltagliati pasta cut from corn flour—and at a modern restaurant called Origine, we ate calamarata pasta tangled with prawns and octopus served over a cassava mousseline. This was sophisticated, contemporary Italian cooking, but every other table was filled with locals eating where they had always eaten. It was also on this trip that I developed a true devotion to Franciacorta. Often overshadowed by the ubiquitous (and often inferior) Prosecco, Franciacorta is produced in Lombardy using the Metodo Classico—the same labor-intensive secondary fermentation used in Champagne. It is rarely exported in large quantities to the United States, making it a true "if you know, you know" treasure of the Italian table. Every night, my ritual of a cold glass of Franciacorta served as the bridge between the grit of the road and the grace of the evening. The journey reached its crescendo at Locanda de’ Banchieri, a former residence of the noble Malaspina family that once served as a post station for taxing the marble trade. Now a Michelin-starred inn run by chef Giacomo Devoto, it sits at the end of our route in Sarzana. We ate wood-fired bread under a ragout of Tuscan black kale and croxetti—the coin-shaped Ligurian pasta—tossed in a white pesto of marjoram and San Rossore pine nuts. It was a meal that distilled the entire landscape into a few plates. In the end, even the traffic didn’t seem so hostile. My most enduring memory of the walk happened on a particularly narrow stretch of road. A shirtless old man in an ancient, battered Fiat pickup eased past me. He didn’t honk; he didn’t rev his engine. He simply slowed down, raised a weathered hand in a gesture of solidarity, and offered a single, perfect word of advice: "Calma." The act of walking is still walking, even when it isn’t "perfect." Travelers rarely talk about the low-grade boredom of long-distance paths—the miles of connective tissue, the industrial parks, and the road shoulders you must endure to reach the "photo-worthy" summits. But perhaps that is the necessary ratio of any trip worth taking. A journey cannot be a screensaver 100% of the time. In Italy, the "too-perfect" places are always too crowded. The crowds sort themselves to the pretty parts, leaving the gritty, honest, and beautiful B-side entirely to you. Calma. Post navigation 7 Exercises to Prep Your Body for Mogul Season.
