Back on the trail again! The first two kilometres were necessary just to get us to our starting point in the center of Vercelli. There, we managed to find the small church of Santo Spirito and the sacristan was kind enough to give us our first stamp… and hopefully the last stamp that is so smudged that it can’t be read and it bled through to other pages. We had a good conversation, completely in Italian and I even managed to understand a fraction of it. As best I could tell, she thought we were crazy. She may be right.
The walk through town was lovely but it did seem to avoid some other cool looking churches. Over the bridge crossing the river east of town saw us start some shoulder-of-the-highway walking. That was not nice but it only lasted a kilometre or so before we followed a gravel path on our right, into farmlands.
There was one farmhouse early on that we needed to circumnavigate. It was there that we met the lovely Carla. She had just opened the gates to the farm for her parents to leave when several dogs also rushed out towards us. Clara managed to recover them as well as her bravery and she came over to chat with us. We had a had a wonderful conversation in broken English and broken Italian about living in Singapore, who else she has met outside her gate, her impressions of Germans, etc. She has never been to Rome, Naples, Venice, Pisa or even Milan but she has travelled the world through the eyes and stories of passing pilgrims. Meeting Carla was today’s highlight by a long shot.
We have already figured out that the route is very well signposted but having the GPS tracks in Maps.me is also very useful. When the trail sends you down a dirt track between rice fields, there may not be another sign for 3km. If you miss that one, you might just keep walking for miles because this isn’t the Camino Frances. There are no painted arrows every 100m.
One drawback for today was that there was no place to stop for a bite and rest in between the beginning and end. Again though, this isn’t the Camino Frances. We managed with some nuts and apples which we bought in Vercelli before our departure and this might be a good idea for every stage. We’ll see.
Arriving in Robbio, we headed for the Parish Hostel but no one answered the door. We backtracked half a kilometre towards the only hotel we knew of in town but that seemed to be closed down some time ago. We figured we were in big trouble but settled in to a sandwich at the local cafe which was run by a nice Chinese woman. I was happy that Melanie could take over translation duties and she ordered in Mandarin!
The Camino provides as always… after lunch, we asked two women who were walking by if they knew of a nearby hotel. One of them gladly said “Follow me!” and like James and John, we knew a good thing when we saw it. They walked us to the Municipal Building where we had tried earlier. It still appeared closed but they took us inside through the back door and found us a woman who ran the donativo municipal hostel on the second floor in the back building. How is the for serendipity?
The hostel had two rooms with two beds each, paper sheets, a bathroom with hot water and a kitchen too. The only drawback here was that it also was about 20m from the town bell tower! Earplugs helped a lot and they also softened the tolling from 10pm to 6am. We were grateful that we didn’t have to take a taxi to another town or sleep outside in the chilly night so our donation was 20€ which, sadly, was obviously a lot more than was expected.
One last note on Robbio, there are several cafes in town but if your idea of a meal is more than a sandwich, you’ll need to head to the train station, where there is a nice restaurant across the street. It’s the only one in town. For the second day in a row, we ordered a single salad, one pasta dish and one main course which was all enough for a decent sized meal that we shared. There was a tourist menu, rather than a pilgrim menu, with a soup, pasta, main course, dessert and wine for the bargain price of 20€ each but we opted for less food and money and we’re happy with the choice.
Melanie & Michael Go Walking 
Hello Michael & Melanie, I wrote you some years ago from the Via Domitia en route to SdC – I didn’t exactly follow your route then but your writings were a great help along the way – thank you. I have just walked the Via di San Francesco (Florence to Rome) and am now thinking about the Via Francigena from Lausanne…..couple of questions (1) I am curious why you started from Vercelli and not Lausanne (2) On the Franciscan way, I found accommodation sometimes hard to come by and also a different vibe from the Caminos in France and Spain – I wonder what your thoughts are about that. (3) Come September, it’s a coin toss between the Via Francigena and the Via de la Plata but I have a feeling that the VdlP would be just too parched and burnt after the hot summer and so better left for the Spring – again, I wonder whether you have any thoughts. Thank you. Nick PS Where are you off to next?!
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Hi Nick,
I hope all is well with you and your family.
Why did we start in Vercelli? Many reasons but they may not apply yo you. First, we used guide books back then and VF’s guide books were divided into three different books with the last one being from Vercelli to Rome. I’m cheap and didn’t want to buy the 2nd volume. Also, I knew that there was a Santiago Camino that went through Vercelli and I planned to eventually connect the two. Also, we had no time to train after a month working on a scuba boat so we wanted some flat easy stages to start out. Another reason is that we usually budget for about 30-35 days per walk. Vercelli was already to far from Rome for us and we didn’t want to make it longer. Finally, if was just very easy for us to get to Vercelli from Singapore after a direct flight to Milan, a bus to the train station and a single train to Vercelli.
Accommodations – they are quite different from the main Santiago routes in Spain and Portugal but I enjoyed the variety. We used ostellos, affittacameras, cheap pensiones and occasional hotels. As I walk with my wife, we often found we could get a private room somewhere for about the price of two beds in a hostel. We took advantage of that. We had good and bad “vibe” experiences in hostels. In one hostel in a church, they collected the small fee then walked us to a closet to drag out our own plastic-covered mat to put on the floor. That was our bed for the night. After the hostelero locked up the remaining mats and left, one pilgrim insisted that she needed a second mat for a decent sleep. She stole one from another pilgrim who had gone to the bathroom. We tried to talk to her but to no avail. We walked out, leaving our mats for the victim and checked into a hotel. That would never happen on a Camino route. Our best ostello experience was in Orio-Litta and that was very much like a Camino albergue for pilgrims.
The Via de la Plata vs the Via Francigena – I have not yet walked the VdlP so I am not the best to compare them. That said, my vote would go to the VF. As noted, we really enjoyed the differences to the regular Camino routes. The culture, the types of pilgrims we met (most of them), the food, the landscapes, everything. The weather should be better in Italy at that time too. Someday I may walk the VdlP and change my mind but if I haven’t done either, I’d do the VF first. I also like telling people that I have walked from Lisbon to Rome (sort of). You will likely meet more people on the VF too, I believe. The closer to Rome you get, the more there are but there was never a Sarria to Santiago crowd. One drawback about the VF is that you have to prepare yourself for Rome. 80% of the people in Rome are pilgrims who came by plane, car, bus, boat, bike, and even a few by foot. No one cares that you walked 850-1,000km to get there. There won’t be many hugs or shared stories in St. Peter’s Square. I have missed that on all our walks that didn’t end in Santiago but Rome has a special way of saying “who cares that you walked here”.
Our plans? Much to my dismay, I doubt we will walk this year. We are moving house in September/October and needed to be in the US in May. Those are the only times I can convince my wife to walk. I think next April or October will likely be our next Camino. I’m hoping to walk some of the French Way into Leon, then the San Salvador to Oviedo, then the Primitivo and finally to Finisterre & Muxia. Only the San Salvador would be new to us but at our age, too many new things make my head spin.
Best regards,
Michael
p.s. if you do the VF, I hope Danilo is still providing the ferry across the Po River. It’s an experience! Also, I hope Claudia and Massimo (after Fiorenzuola d’Arda / San Rocco) are still welcoming pilgrims into their home for drinks and a chat. Those were highlights not to miss.
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What a great note. Thank you, Michael.
What you say about walking into Rome absolutely gels with my experience earlier this year on the Via di San Francesco – the stages from Florence (way too crowded) to Assisi and on to Rieti were largely lovely (but pretty tough in terms of the amount of ascent and descent on any given day – as you look across from one hilltop town Umbrian to the one you’re heading for, you realise there’s a many-hundred meter drop and then climb in between). The last stages of the VdSF were, frankly, somewhat forgettable so if I do opt for the VF, it’d probably be from Lausanne to Acquapendente or similar. And yes, arriving in St Peter’s is a muted experience when compared with SdC. I left very early on the last day and got to the Vatican at about 08.00 thinking I’d beat the crowds – well that didn’t work out too well – it was already heaving with tour groups.
Yep, your description of lodgings along the way gibes though I did stay in quite a number of good donativos/monasteries/convents along the way … but overall, a mixed bag.
I am still tossing up what to do but I don’t think I’ll walk the VdlP this autumn – springtime, when it’s green and blossoming is apparently much better than the parched autumn flatlands after a blistering summer.
So. Probably the VF or possibly something along northern Spain.
As to your thoughts on your next route, a couple of years ago, I walked the Lebaniego/Vadiniense from San Vicente de la Barquera to Leon, then the Salvador to Oviedo, then the Primitivo to Lugo, then the Camino Verde to Sobrado (on the Norte), which only leaves a couple of stages on the human highway that is the Frances from Saria to SdC – a really nice route with one or two challenging stages.
I am also thinking of doing some of that again but maybe when I get to Lugo, I might hop on a bus to Zamora and doing the last 15 stages or so of the VdlP.
I am in the fortunate position of living in Bristol – Bilbao or Geneva are very short hops from here – so I won’t decide until the later on this summer but I’ll let you know.
Thanks for writing. All the best, Nick
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