This World is Not Conclusion: Viterbo to Rome

This World is Not Conclusion: Viterbo to Rome

The End.

This blog post has taken me a long time to write. I’m back in Newcastle and have been for a week. I have been sitting here and doing next to nothing.

I arrived in Rome and the necessary efficiency of my pilgrim-lifestyle evaporated. Like a corset bursting, a laziness immediately sagged to my sides. I had time to waste and waste it I will.

But I have reached the end before I have written it. So I shall return to Viterbo, which is where I left the last blog post. It is quite a large town but feels very much within the gravitational pull of Rome. There were road signs that pointed to my ultimate destination.

I explain this because those last few days felt like extended arrival. There was an imminence and an immanence. A certainty that shined but felt fixed. I had, for a long time, been walking on a road that was endless and with this endlessness came a beautiful sense of possibility. Any number of anythings could happen. Now, only a fixed number of some things could happen.

I was not as miserable as this might make me sound. I was, in fact, quite ready to finish. I felt ready to arrive. I felt ready to stop walking. My cup had overflowed for long enough. There is a time for walking and a time for ending and every thing has its time.

So, I left Viterbo with a strange mixture of feelings. There was confidence and there was calmness and there was a little sadness. I made my way out of the suburb that housed the Capuchin monastery and back through the centre of town.

I walked fairly leisurely and stopped at a church that looked old and had an open door. Inside, an order of nuns were singing Lauds behind bars. There was a man in the nave. I watched for a while, strangely mournful. The morning service felt sickly and faltering. I wanted to stay but I was pulled by a desire to keep moving and pushed by the quality of the singing.

I paid a visit to the cathedral again and spotted the grave of an ancient Pope. His tomb was inscribed with a line from Dante’s Paradiso, describing his place in heaven. A quick google told me that he had apparently engaged in necromancy.

And so, I left the Duomo and was soon leaving the medieval walls of Viterbo. It was early in the morning and there were few cars about although I did see a nun that I had spotted when I had entered at the other side of the city. I tried to smile at her but she seemed to be on a mission.

The forecast was for the hottest day of the trip so far. It promised that the temperature would be thirty three degrees. There was an option to divert the route to an ancient Roman bridge but I decided to get to my destination as quickly as I could.

The road out of Viterbo was cut through the hillside to form two cliffs at either edge of the tarmac. It curved and gently bent and although it remained resolutely unpedestrianised, the cars were few.

I walked on, the cliff sides casting a darkness over the road on account of the low morning sun. I walked easily and at a pace that had become almost as familiar as breathing.

The road met a busier road and the route diverted off and over the edge of an embankment. The sun was starting to peek over but the temperature must still have been in the twenties.

Then, the path curved away from the busy highway and passed through farmland. The landscape sloped and tipped delicately. It had nothing of the beauty of Tuscany and the dryness of the land was starting to seem barren.

And yet, there was something assuringly real about this perceived lack of productivity. The infertility of the Roman countryside convinced me of something.

I was nearly in Vetralla after too long. The total distance of the day was less than twenty kilometres and I had been walking without stopping. I phoned to arrange my accommodation for the evening. He told me I was welcome at any time.

I walked for another hour or so and faced a small hill into Vetralla. The town is the only place outside of England to be offered the protection of the Crown. It was given to the English Ambassador under Henry VIII by Pope Julius II. I don’t think it ever had to be defended.

It had one long street that I turned right down. I ate an early lunch on the steps of the locked Duomo. It looked as if it had been rebuilt in the 19^th Century although there were some remnants of the medieval city walls nearby.

After waiting a little while, I made my way further down the street to the hostel, which was in the yard of a very old church dedicated to St Augustine. Outside, looking typically unfound (even after so many miles), I was pointed to a doorway by a man on a bench.

I made my way in and was being shown around by a couple of workmen when a man descended from a set of metal stairs and took over my hospitality. He had a cigarette clutched between his teeth, his shoulder were permanently hunched, and he moved with the speed of a man who had pickled his liver.

I was shown to a room with about twelve beds and told that lunch was at one and dinner was at half past seven. I was left to my own devices.

The place was quite strange: the bathroom filled with flies and the shower curtain dangled on two rings. There was dark mould growing in vast cloud-like patterns in several rooms. The dormitory, though, was impeccably clean and had a collection of eclectic philosophy on a shelf in the corner.

I washed quickly in the shower, slightly terrified of the insects.

As I was sorting through some things next to my bed a man with shoulder length hair came into the room. He started sweeping the already quite clean floor and talking to me. He was Rocco.

“Sorry,” said Rocco “The pilgrims don’t usually arrive so early.” He was quite a young guy and it wasn’t exactly clear what his role in the set-up was, apart from floor sweeping. “All the doors are open in this place. If you need something, just ask and we will try to help you.”

It turned out Rocco slept in the bed in the corner of the room. His things were laid out very neatly. “Please don’t touch any of my things” He asked. When I assured him that I wouldn’t he told me that “Some pilgrims are strange.”

Another man arrived shortly afterward. He had shared the same dormitory as me in Viterbo. He was on a bike but seemed to be doing walking distances. His name was Marco and he was softly spoken but had wide eyes and a goatee.

Soon it was time for my second lunch. The man who had welcomed me was cooking spaghetti in a kitchen that looked like it might spontaneously generate some penicillin. There were pans on worktops with plates balanced over them. I dared not lift them.

The pasta was simple but tasty. “Troppo dente?” the man asked me. I shook my head as I crunched through it.

Aside from our host, me, and Marco there was another man at the table. He was very tall and looked a bit gaunt. He wore a white shirt and cream trousers. He introduced himself as a friend of the host.

The Italian spoken was very quick but I’m fairly sure he referred to his friend as the ‘Prior’ of the place. Soon, this prior had retreated to the doorway to smoke another cigarette.

It didn’t seem like an entirely inappropriate analogy. The church yard was  felt like a cloister and the two men did seem like part of some strange order. The walls of the cloister were painted with strange murals blurring biblical characters with probably local figures.

The man in the white shirt had stuffed a paper napkin around the collar of his shirt but he was foiled by a piece of spaghetti that dropped past it and into his lap. He cursed, stood up and began aggressively dabbing at his crotch with a damp cloth.

The rapid Italian between the three men had plastered on my face a serene, half-idiotic smile. I would occasionally answer a question if it was phrased slowly and simply enough.

In the afternoon I retreated to my bed to wait out the scorching afternoon. I padded through the garden once to see Rocco spinning in a temporary children’s swimming pool, eyes closed and hair flowing out to his arms. Later, he would say I was welcome to swim in the same pool. “Its not that clean though.” He added, grinning.

I walked back up the street to try an enter the Duomo. The door was open but it quickly became obvious that someone was about to be buried. Sightseeing during a funeral in a small town seems dreadfully inappropriate so I made my way back to the strange cloister.

Dinner was a similar affair. The same four participants and the same peculiar tension. Rocco stayed for the grace but then left with his food on a tray. Our host ate quickly and swiftly returned to his post at the door to fill an already full ashtray with more cigarette butts. Smoke rose to the webs of mould on the ceiling.

I thanked the man and left the dining room. The sun was coming down quickly and the temperature was finally becoming completely tolerable. I lounged in the garden and wrote before heading to bed.

The next day I was up early again. I left the dormitory quietly, into the fresh air and young sun. I walked up the long street of Vetralla and past several locked coffee shops: it was a Sunday morning. Deciding that breakfast would be unlikely, I walked on, crossing a busy road and passing out into fields.

Soon, I was passing through orchards of nut trees. The path ran ambiguously amongst them and my bag dragged against branches. In the middle of one of the fields was a Roman-age tower. Inside it lived a rusted wheelbarrow.

I was heading to Sutri that day. It was a distance of about twenty-four kilometres and I was keen to have a final night camping in the wild.

After too long I had arrived in the roughly halfway-point of Capranica. I was concerned about Sunday opening times but managed to find a supermarket and stocked up for lunch and dinner. I sat on a wall in the shade and made myself a sandwich. Then, I clipped on my sunglasses and prepared for a sweaty afternoon.

Leaving the town, I saw Marco zip past me on his bike. He carried a guitar on his back. At another crossroads I saw Yolanda consulting a map. She was a Dutch pilgrim that I had met back in San Gimignano and our paths had crossed a few times. That is an interestingly flawed idiom because we were, of course, on precisely the same path.

Yolanda asked if she could walk with me for a while and so we set off together. After some time walking down tarmacked roads we passed into woodland. The path ran alongside a small river and the footing became tangled by roots.

We crossed the river several times over bridges made out of logs of varying security. Yolanda felt that one was so unsafe that she preferred to ford it.

If I had been alone I might have passed over the bridges and through the woodland quickly and thoughtlessly, but Yolanda’s presence made the late morning feel like more of an adventure.

The trees were thick and the shade rich. I thought that it would be an excellent place to camp but I didn’t have enough water for the night without using the river. So, after a while we passed out of the woodland and across a wild meadow and were soon approaching Sutri.

We sat next to a water trough and both consulted our maps. I had heard that there was a campsite near the town and thought it might be a good idea. We agreed to head up into the town and both ask for accommodation options at the tourist office.

Sutri had Etruscan origins and was built on a hill. The sun had just become blazing as we began to climb two flights of steep flights up to the square. We reached the top eventually and settled ourselves under a café’s parasol. Yolanda bought me a beer for the help I’d given her although I’m still not sure what assistance I gave.

The walk had, it is true, been more challenging for her than it had been for me. But that is the nature of things. The way, although physically constant, does not present the same difficulties to each person. The experience is at once communal and utterly individual.

In general, I have never felt any sense of competition in the way. There is some achievement but it is not gained by being quicker or cleverer than others or by carrying a heavier or lighter rucksack or by walking further. It is gained by the search and only the search.

The tourist office was the other side of the square and I made my way over. I asked the woman behind the desk if there was a campsite nearby. She looked doubtful and said she didn’t know. When she opening her mouth to speak she revealed her three scraggled brown teeth.

“Are you English?” She asked in an East London accent, picking up on my obviously disastrous Italian. When I replied that I was, she explained that there were some nuns who occasionally took in pilgrims but that they were quite unreliable. She suggested that I try a B&B that she knew. I was also enquiring for Yolanda so I asked more.

Before I could protest she had arranged two places for me there. I wouldn’t be sleeping in the tent after all. She walked me to the door of the tourist office. “Right, its just over there.” She said, pointing. “Just go and ring the buzzer and explain that you’re the pilgrim. She’s waiting for you now.”

I thanked her and picked up my bag to leave. “I’m sorry about my teeth,” she said in something of a blurt. I felt immediately terrible: I must have unwittingly looked at them. “Please don’t be sorry.” “No. I know they’re dreadful. I try to smile with my mouth closed.” “Its really nothing to be sorry about…” “I’m getting new ones on Wednesday. I’ve had stitches in my palate. I’m on baby food, would you believe it?” “Wednesday? That’s amazing! New teeth on Wednesday. That’ll be great!” “I know,” she said, smiling “I can’t wait.” She looked as if she might cry. I hugged her and said goodbye.

I went over to Yolanda to tell her about the B&B. We gathered our things and walked past the tourist office to the door of our new accommodation. I waved at my new friend. “Terrible teeth.” Yolanda said, an ounce too loudly. My face burned and I prayed that she hadn’t heard.

Later in the day, I walked around a scalding hot Sutri. I was glad I had an air conditioned room to return to. There was an ancient amphitheatre and Etruscan necropolis just outside of the city.

In the evening I offered up the food in my rucksack for dinner. I cooked pasta and pesto and we ate it across a circular dining table in our shared room. We talked about our families and about walking. Yolanda told me about her adventures and her time in England working on a campsite in London. We laughed and, I think, we became friends.

Yolanda told me lots of her adventures had involved a tent. She hadn’t, however, brought one of them with her on the Francigena. “I read that two Dutch people had been murdered whilst wild camping in Italy.” I was glad that I’d discovered this nugget of information with only three nights left to go.

The next morning, I overcooked some scrambled eggs early in the morning for me and Yolanda. She had a later arrival date in Rome so was planning to stay another day in Sutri. Kindly, she offered to wash up so I could get off on the walk. We hugged and wished each other luck. “Follow your dreams,” she told me.

I walked down the sloped street out of Sutri, alone again. I was happy to be by myself. Although I had enjoyed company when I found it and, in fact, made some great friends along the way, I had started my journey alone and alone I would end it.

I passed along quiet, unremarkable roads for a couple of hours before approaching the town of Monterosi which was about half way to Campagnano di Roma, where I would be sleeping. I took a diversion to visit the nearby lake. I had become anxious not to miss things, not to waste the opportunities of the road.

The town itself was small but pretty. I passed through it without stopping and out alongside the busy Via Cassia for a short while. A route which avoided cars then turned to the left and I followed it.

The landscape was scrubby and I passed over more quiet roads. Soon, I was walking through a small nature reserve and trees escorted me. There was a river with a short waterfall. Italian visitors were getting photographs next to it.

I waited for them to clear before jumping into the deep, clear pool. I stood in the cold water which came up to my chest. Clouds were covering the sun and in a few minutes I was cold for the first time in a while. I climbed out, re-dressed and started walking again.

Just as I was leaving, Marco cycled past me again. He asked if I needed anything but I told him I was fine. He was wide-eyed and whispery when I told him I had been bathing in the river.

The short swim kept me cool for the next half hour or so. The path returned to the same sorts of roads. The fields, if anything, looked a little drier.

After walking for a while I met a woman on a bike who told me she wasn’t sure the road ahead was open. She made a couple of phone calls and told me to try it: the other option was a two hour diversion.

And so, I continued on and after about an hour I found Campagnano on the horizon. It was built on another hill and I began to make my way up its steep concrete track. I met the building works which were the roadblock that the cyclist had warned me about but, thankfully, there was a pedestrian passage.

I walked through the town as a delicate rain began to spit. I made myself lunch on an exposed bench, foolishly daring the rain to fall harder.

There was an oratorio that accommodated pilgrims and I had called the priest who had said I was welcome to come. After eating, I made my way there, a short distance from the centre.

Arriving, the door was locked and I sat on the wall. A cat came and befriended me, sitting on my lap for a couple of hours as I waited. The cat was blind in its left eye. Occasionally it would roll over and bare its claws. I have a scab on my right arm from those claws that has only just healed.

I waited until four o’clock and the priest did not arrive. I made a phone call and didn’t really understand the answer but thought I expressed the fact that I was waiting in situ. I was in no rush. There was nothing to see in the town and I had nothing really to do.

A man from a local café came up and asked me if I was okay. I explained that I was waiting, and I wasn’t sure if the priest was coming. He made a phone call and assured me that he would be here soon.

After another half an hour, a Fiat pulled up abruptly and an old man exited the car. He showed me inside and upstairs to a floor with four dormitories, each with at least eight beds in.

He gave me a key and wished me a good rest. The building was vast and empty. I would be the only person staying.

That night, I went to bed fairly early but woke up again at eleven o’clock. I had left the light in my room on but could hear someone moving around in the corridor. I quietly got up, turned off the light and locked my door.

For some reason, it was the most scared I had been all trip. The oratorio was a large, empty, dark building and felt like it could easily become the scene of a crime. I fell in and out of sleep uneasily and could occasionally still hear the movements. I am unsure  whether or not I was dreaming.

The next morning I tried to leave quickly, still a bit shaken from my uneasy night’s sleep. I walked back into the centre of town and ate breakfast at a café. The sun quickly banished residual fears. It is funny how malice seems less possible in daylight.

Leaving Campagnano, I passed uphill and into countryside. The roads undulated and the flora was carefree and beautiful in its quantity.

Some people do Campagnano to Rome in one day. It is a little over forty kilometres but very possible. It began to feel like I was stepping my final steps. That I should try to feel them more keenly. I’m not sure if I succeeded in doing this or if it was even a worthwhile aim.

I passed up and down more hills and was surprised but pleased by the amount of exercise I was getting. Soon, I was passing through a small park and heading into Formello, a pretty old town half way to La Storta.

On entering the town, I bought myself some lunch at a small deli. There was a fairly large group of English school children who must have been walking the Francigena too. I didn’t identify myself to them.

It was still morning so I put my lunch in my bag and walked on, leaving the old town and returning to the countryside. I walked down a road with some blackberry bushes on the right. There were one or two of those most-English-of-autumnal-fruits that were ripe.

The route looped round the edges of fields extravagantly. I found myself walking in the complete wrong direction a few times. I smiled, having to come to admire these windings as the eccentricities of a good friend.

There was a waymarker on a stone pillar: an arrow to the right, CANTEBURY, and an arrow to the left, ROME 26km. I blinked and tried to process the shortness of that distance. The figure which had been impossibly big had finally reached a number that was completable.

I began to pass through suburbs and soon reached La Storta. It used to be its own town, I think, but has now been absorbed as a suburb of Rome. It is built almost entirely along the Via Cassia.

A little down the road was a convent which had a couple of rooms for pilgrims. I made my way there and saw Marco at the turning to the building. His face cracked into a smile but I was ashamed to be disappointed to see him: I had wanted this final night alone.

We made our way up to the gate together and Marco spoke into the intercom. As if by magic, the green gates slowly swung open, but I knew that electromagnets were more likely involved.

A young nun showed us to a dormitory and for the rest of the day I read a little and hid in the shade of the convent’s garden.

I had for a long time imagined my night in La Storta. It was one of the first stops that I had heard of on the Francigena. The night before an event always seems to be rubbed with the importance of the event itself.

In the evening there was a mass at the cathedral. I walked down the Cassia and sat in one of the pews. The interior of the building was stifling and I felt very sorry for the priest in his thick vestments.

The mass was combined with Vespers and lasted a while. I lapsed in and out of concentration partly on account of the heat and partly due to the fact that I couldn’t understand most of what was going on.

After it finished I stayed for a short while, again, trying to squeeze out the importance of those final moments.

I did leave the cathedral feeling oddly sanctified. I then went to a pizza place and ordered a slice and glass of cold red wine.

Then, I returned to the convent. Marco was sitting in the garden and I sat near him to watch the sunset, framed beautifully by some trees.

The sunset set on for the last time on the pilgrimage.

Retiring, I was surprised by how easily I slept. I thought I might have been like an eight-year-old the night before Christmas but I was filled with a surprising sense of calm.

My parents and a few friends were coming to Rome to meet me. We had agreed to meet on Monte Mario (the site of the first sight of St Peter’s) and walk the final few kilometres together. They were flying that day and wouldn’t be at the hill until the late afternoon, so I had the morning to wait in La Storta before setting off.

There is a chapel dedicated to St Ignatius of Loyola in La Storta. Ignatius was the founder of the Jesuits and the writer of the Spiritual Exercises. He had been called to Rome by the Pope of the day and stopped in La Storta.

There, he saw a vision of Christ telling him: “I will be kind to you in Rome.” Ignatius wasn’t sure what the words meant and thought that he and his party might be martyred. In fact, the next day he was welcomed warmly. The chapel is on the alleged site of the vision.

At eight o’clock there was another mass in that chapel. It had already begun when I arrived and I struggled through the narrow door with my wide backpack. It was the same priest as the evening before. After the service he asked me where I had come from and pinched my cheek.

I crossed the road and settled into a coffee shop for a few hours. I waited. It felt strange and artificial, but it did built a sense of anticipation.

I had become aware that the journey I was on was in fact two. One was along the Via Francigena and had started in Canterbury and would finish in St Peter’s Square, less than twenty kilometres away. This was the journey I was ready to finish.

The other was more difficulty to quantify. It was, for want of better words, a journey of metaphysical development. It was bolted to the journey of the physical road but it was unmistakably separate. This was the journey I was not ready to finish.

In that unassuming café, I decided I would try to build up enough cognitive momentum so that when I entered St Peter’s square I could wrench the two journeys apart. I wanted to, in my mind, burst past the finish line of the Vatican and not cease in progress.

I had convinced myself of this whilst sitting under the shade of the café’s umbrella. The day was getting warmer and warmer and I knew I would be setting out in the peak of the afternoon heat. I sipped a diet coke and tried not to worry.

My phone buzzed to tell me trains had been delayed and we would have to meet on the hill a little later. I was both calm and angsty. I had been walking for three months: what difference was a couple of hours? I had been walking for three months: I was desperate to arrive.

Finally, my (self-)appointed time came. I packed my things and said my last ciao. The approach to Rome is famously bad. There is about a 6km walk along the side of the Cassia. The afternoon traffic was fairly relentless but I had prepared myself for worse.

My senses felt skewed: the cars were loud and the sun was high but I wasn’t uncomfortable. Strangely, my rucksack felt very light and I didn’t feel too hot at all. The wind and my sunglasses disorientated me pleasantly.

As I walked, I began to try and retrace my steps in my memory. I thought of the first day and crossing the South Downs Way in naïve jollity and then urgent distress. I thought of the walk along the French coast line. And then then the walk into Guines and being lost in the forest. I didn’t make it very far before losing my concentration.

After an hour or so of trying to make that final walk incredibly special it became reassuringly normal. My thoughts fell into the pleasant, aimless spiral that had become their habit.

Earlier than I had expected, I turned right off the Via Cassia. I passed downhill and into a park on the outskirts of Rome. There was a footpath that was heavily overgrown with thorns and stinging nettles.

When I was about ten, I fell into a patch of head-height stinging nettles. I came out in hives all over my body and had a kind of flu reaction that lasted for three days. I’ve had a slight phobia and been convinced I’m allergic to them ever since.

I squeezed my way through the footpath, largely unscathed apart from a leaf that painfully found its way into the tongue of my boot.

The footpath gave way to a saddle-valley. The path ran unclearly across dead grass and plant life. It was sandy and felt bizarrely like a desert. My zen state of bodily self-control began to slip and sweat began to flow.

I left the park and climbed a steep hill into a Roman surburb. It felt exactly like the sort of London village that grows up around a tube station. I walked through the city, making my way to the Vatican.

My phone rang again to tell me that the Monte Mario hillside rendezvous would have to be delayed again. I suggested that I could meet them at St Peter’s square but they were fairly adamant on walking the final distance together. I tried not to be frustrated and as a butterfly flew past my cheek found peace in waiting.

I passed into the Monte Mario park and began to zig zag my way up. There was a false peak that gave a wide view of the city. Tucked in the corner, almost obscured by trees was the dome of St Peter’s. I sat for a while and felt elated.

Again, this was a moment I had imagined almost constantly. It was another of the fractal arrivals. I mentally celebrated there for a few minutes and bid farewell to my perfect solitude.

I ambled on, delaying myself by stopping often and following loopy routes.

Eventually, I reached the famous spot on Monte Mario which gives the clearest view of the dome. Fractal.

My parents and friends were at a bar a little further up the hill. I walked up to meet them, taking long strides.

We had a smiling reunion and drank a beer before being shooed on by the proprietor for staying too long without ordering a second drink. Then, we made our way down from the mountain, on a winding path with large and difficult cobbles.

We reached the Viale Angelico which ran in a long straight line to St Peter’s square. It was the road that Roland had told me was the length of a single rosary. It felt longer, and I had become impatient to arrive. It was already the early evening and I wanted to cross the final ‘T’.

Just as we saw one of the gates to Vatican City my mum thought it was an appropriate moment to visit a cash point. When I questioned her timing she replied with “Well, will you want a pizza later, or not?”

We passed under the gate together and into the square. It was just before seven o’clock and there were few tourists. The moment was inevitably anti-climactic but I wasn’t disappointed by this fact. The place, in itself, was not what was valuable to me.

We stayed a while to get photographs in the fading light and then my dad took my rucksack and we walked to our apartment.

It had happened. It was finished.

Everything beyond that moment was no longer the pilgrimage. Were things now changed and different? I’m not sure.

We spent most of the following day looking round Vatican City and then celebrated in the evening.

The Vatican is built around the basilica of St Peter, the largest church in the world and the site of his grave. It is a ferociously popular destination for tourists and pilgrims of all modes of transport.

The following day, I dragged everyone to visit the other six pilgrim churches of Rome. Visiting the Seven Pilgrims Churches is a sixteenth century tradition that I felt would be a good way to mark the conclusion.

To get to the Seven Churches you can make a twenty-two kilometre walk but the previous night had removed that as a viable option. So, a touch hungover, we took a bus to our first stop: the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Wall.

St Paul is the other major saint of Rome. Peter and Paul were said to have met in Rome and one of the doors of the Basilica commemorates this alleged meeting.

The church was virtually empty compared to St Peter’s. For me though, Paul is the more appropriate saint with which to finish the pilgrimage.

He is famous for his conversion on the road to Damascus. He was riding there to continue his persecution of Christians when a Light appeared to him. He could not see for three days but then the scales fell from his eyes and he, utterly transformed by the experience, became one of the most important fathers of the church.

The Road to Damascus has become a metaphor to describe an abrupt moment of realisation and transformation. It describes the power of change but also the possibility of change: how a person can become precisely the opposite of what they were previously.

Last year I spent a while studying the genre of autobiography and its theory. Starting from Augustine’s Confessions, most autobiographies have a moment akin to Damascus: a before and an after. A first self and a second self. The pivot occurs through a moment.

I don’t know if I believe this to be true to life. I think the process of change is more gradual. Perhaps, fractal. Few have a Damascene moment. Few change into a person that will be unrecognised from their first self. Instead, we are shifted and shunted and slip into something changed.

The road remains a powerful thing. Wherever it may lead, it is a place of discovery and change, and the least interesting thing you will find is the place where you are going.

So, thank you very much if you have been reading this blog. It has been a way for me to re-process the thoughts I have had along the way. If you have sent me feedback or comments: thank you! It has kept me writing and thinking.

It has taken me so long to write this last post because the blog has felt very much part of the pilgrimage. Finishing it has been something I can delay most easily.

But now, I think I can say: It is finished.

As a sort of digestif here are a  few slices from the Finale of Middlemarch in which Eliot writes the best ending I have ever read:

Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending. Who can quit young lives after being long in company with them, and not desire to know what befell them in after-year? For the fragment of a life, however typical, is not the sample of an even web: promises may not be kept, and an ardent outset may be followed by a declension; latent powers may find their long-awaited opportunity; a past error may urge a grand retrieval.

Some set out, like Crusaders of old, with a glorious equipment of hope and enthusiasm, and get broken by the way, wanting patience with each other and the world.

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

To anyone considering undertaking the Francigena or any other long pilgrimage route I can only recommend it without reservation. It has been the best thing I have ever done. If you have any practical questions, please feel free to get in touch.

I might keep this blog running to publish a couple more ‘Thoughts’. And, to be honest, I think I’ll be walking again sooner rather than later.

Thank you again.

With my love to you,
David x