Way of St. Francis: The idea

Between eventually finishing my third book and starting my book reading tour I had several weeks time for a hike - in February! Which is not the greatest time to go long-distance hiking in Europe.   Therefore I was looking for a trail in Southern Europe with a hopefully favourable climate and a good infrastructure in case the weather was not cooperating. I still wanted to go camping whenever possible and therefore was looking for a trail close to nature. 


I ruled out trails in Spain because I have already hiked thousands of kilometers there and Greece because I’ll hike there in summer. Which left Italy where I have never done any long trail in the past – shame on me! As pilgrimage trails generally provide a good infrastructure (and lots of monuments for sightseeing) I very quickly came up with the Way of St. Francis which is also easily accessible via public transport. It runs from Florence via Assisi to Rome and both cities are low cost airline destinations. It is 600 km long which was ideal for three weeks plus a bit of sightseeing. 


Still there was one obstacle: The trails leads up to more than 1000 metres in the Appennin mountains and there might be snow at such altitude. But this turned out to be a very mild winter and I could find out before departure that there was no snow even at the highest points of the trail. I flew to Bologna, took a bus to Florence and started my hike with a day of extensive sightseeing.