Campagnano di Roma to Formello (walked)
Wednesday, July 26, 2023: We left Hostel Gheltrude in Campagnano di Roma at 6:10 am this morning. I carried my pack today because the distance to Formello was short (~9km) and it was supposed to be 10 degrees cooler than it had been over the last two weeks, around 89 degrees. Besides, I had cancelled all my bag transports with Bags-Free and didn’t trust them to deliver in a timely manner.
We headed out of town through the Porta Romana city gate and forked to the left. We were on the SP10A roadway, heading uphill and out of town. We found a fountain and rest area, too early in the walk to be much use, and then climbed steeply for a long time. We kept going on asphalt. We then entered Park Veio, a 15,000 hectare park established by the region of Lazio in 1997 as part of a plan to preserve a green belt of natural and agricultural areas around Rome. This park was the setting for much of today’s walk.
We finally came to the Santuario del Sorbo where we climbed a steep uphill to the entrance. Legends say that in a visitation at this serene site, the Virgin Mary miraculously regrew a local farmer’s withered hand. In the 15th-century, Cardinal Orsini built a church and convent in honor of the vision over the ruins of a 10th-century castle.
Above the church’s altar is an 11th-century icon of the Virgin and Child. A colorful fresco of the Assumption of Mary into heaven adorns the apse.
We spent some time at the sanctuary where it was cool and there were benches and tables where we could rest for a while, as well as a nice bathroom. Darina wanted to pray the rosary 📿 there and said it would take some time. It was maybe a half hour but I was happy to rest. I didn’t know how she could sit in those Italian churches for mass or for long periods as they were always hot and muggy with stagnant air. I could barely go in to sit and say a prayer and take a few pictures before I needed to escape.
I found myself to be much less interested in the spiritual aspect of the Via Francigena than I felt while doing the Camino de Santiago in 2018. I don’t know why that was. Maybe because the path was challenging and miserable, the heat was extreme and we rarely encountered any other pilgrims. There were very few towns in the middle of the stages, and most of the churches were closed. It wasn’t the same communal atmosphere and my heart just wasn’t into it. Plus, lately I have been troubled by the Catholic patriarchy, especially after the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the extreme right decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, taking away all of women’s freedoms. I’m a fallen-away Catholic anyway; I fell away years ago, in my 20s, and though I felt a resurgence of interest during my Camino experience, it has since evaporated.
After our visit to the sanctuary, we walked back downhill to the route and followed as it descended deeper into the forested valley. We were on asphalt almost the entire day, which was fine by me. On the valley floor, we crossed the Cremera Torrente on a small bridge and then crossed a cattle grid onto a very wide gravel road leading into open pasture land. There were a surprising number of cars driving past and kicking up dust.
We found a marble monument declaring 36km to Rome, erected by the Via Francigena confraternity of Formello. We passed an ugly rusted arched steel sculpture and then the road climbed steeply, back again on asphalt. Just before a second cattle grid, we saw three horned cows lumbering slowly across the road, oblivious to us interlopers.
We then started seeing houses as we approached Formello on its main traffic street. We found a very nice bar near the main small piazza into the old town. We sat at the bar for a long time waiting until our house was ready for check-in. Finally it was ready and we traipsed to the farthest end of town.
We checked into a beautiful house, Il Rosciolo sulla Francigena, with a living room, kitchen, dining room, 2 bathrooms, terra cotta tiled floors, lots of steps including a narrow winding staircase to the upstairs bedroom with 2 twin beds. And surprise, we had air conditioning! The only negative was no real pilgrim amenities like a drying rack to hang our laundry. An entire breakfast basket sat beautifully prepared in the refrigerator. The whole place was a far cry from our tiny matchbox-sized house the night before, for nearly the same price: 60 euros for the shoebox house and 65 euros for today’s sprawling home.
We showered and did laundry and walked back out the main gate, stopping first at the 11th-century Church of San Lorenzo and the Piazza Chigi, which houses an archeological museum and pilgrim hostel reached by glass stairs that recount the journey from a Canterbury to Rome on the Via Francigena. We never found these stairs, sadly.
Formello, population ~13,000, is a car-focused Roman commuter town and is supposedly the last picturesque neighborhood on the Via Francigena before Rome.
We went back to the bar and had sandwiches and beers. We went on a wild goose chase to find a place to buy a bus ticket for tomorrow. I finally found one and then we returned to the house to relax.
We went to La Cantina, not far from our house in the old town, for dinner. I had Paccheri short pasta with bacon, spicy tomato sauce and king prawns. The big round tubes of pasta were cooked so “al dente” that is was almost like they were dumped directly from the box onto my plate; they were very chewy. The sauce was tasty but I had search to find pieces of shrimp and bacon. Darina’s meal was better: Tonnarello with peas, crunchy bacon and pecorino cheese fondue. I had white wine from the region and Darina had a beer. We each got “ricotta and chocolate tart,” which was a very hard cookie with whipped cream and chocolate chips on top. Maybe it was my least favorite meal in Italy.
We did enjoy a great bread basket with warm rolls and olive oil. It was strange that the chef came out to take our order, maybe because the waitress didn’t speak any English.
Here is a map showing first, our whole trip to Italy and second, the steps on the Via Francigena.
Steps: 20,823 steps; Miles: 8.83. Day 11 Stage Walk: 6.69 miles, or 10.76 km.
Weather (Formello): High 89°, Low 64°. Sunny.
Formello to La Giustiniana (by bus)
Thursday, July 27: On Thursday morning, I left our beautiful house in Formello at 9:00 and went to our favorite bar to have a cappuccino and to wait for the 10:10 bus to one of the Rome suburbs, La Giustiniana. Darina of course had walked and had left around 6:00. An Italian guy named Federico spoke a bit of English and struck up a conversation. He told me he was a volunteer fireman in the countryside and also an architect. He said he had been to New York in the fall before the Twin Towers fell, in 2000. I told him my son was considering becoming a firefighter (luckily that idea was short-lived!) and I didn’t like it because it seems incredibly dangerous. He said it is only dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing.
I went to the bus stop before 10 (just in case the bus came early because one thing was guaranteed: they never came at the scheduled time). The bus stop was in front of the bar with no seat and no shade, so I stood there waiting for the 10:10 bus. By 10:20, I was wondering if the Google bus schedule was wrong and was about to go back to the bar when the bus finally appeared.
I arrived in La Giustiniana by 11:00 and walked up about 15 minutes to Resort La Rocchetta. I was appalled by the amount of trash that was strewn along the Via Cassia and overflowing out of the giant trash bins. It looked and smelled horrible. Once I got off the Via Cassia, the neighborhoods were nice and clean. I’d commented to Darina many times about how strange it was in Europe that everyone lived behind big locked gates. It seemed rather paranoid, this way of life.She had been to the US and she thought it strange we didn’t live behind locked gates. We do have gated communities in the U.S., but I don’t live in one.
The Resort was unable or unwilling to give us an early check-in so I sat in the garden and had a Coke Zero while the woman who owned the place talked away about her 3-year-old grandson Ian who lived in Ventura, California. She was disappointed they were so far away but what could she do? Her son married an American woman after all. The dog on the property was named Olivia and I told her my soon-to-be granddaughter would be named Alexandra Olivia.
Meanwhile I was in touch with Darina who was waiting for a bus from La Storta. She said she’d arrive around noon. I told her to get off the bus and walk straight ahead and I’d meet her at the bar there for some lunch because the Resort had no food. I was having an old and stale zucchini and cheese pizza and a beer and she joined and had a sandwich and beer. We were both appalled that the bathroom in the bar had no water coming out of the faucet and we didn’t like the idea of eating food prepared by people who weren’t washing their hands after going to the bathroom. Yikes!
We walked up to La Rocchetta and finally checked in, did laundry (I was still awfully sweaty even when I didn’t walk) and then napped. At 4:00, we came down to have a glass of wine in the garden and found the entire reception closed for the day. I didn’t even have any coins to get a drink or snack out of the vending machine.
We talked about walking to Vatican City the next day. Darina said it would be a shame if I didn’t walk into Rome and I had to say I agreed. So we decided we would walk together into Rome, first taking a bus to the entrance of the Insugherata Nature Reserve to avoid walking along the busy (& stinky) Via Cassia.
Darina and I sat in the reception area writing in our journals when an Australian woman named Anna joined us. She and two friends and their three daughters were walking the Via Francigena for one week, from Montefiasconi to Rome, fully supported and arranged by a travel company. In a previous year, they had walked in Tuscany, from San Miniato to Siena. Anna’s husband would join her in Rome after a golf outing in Ireland, and then they would go to the Greek islands. She had already been to Sicily and took an Italian class in Bologna for a week. As Aussies, they take extended holidays to make travel worth their while. She was traveling for 7 weeks altogether, just a bit longer than me at 6+ weeks.
reception area at La Rocchetta
At the 7:30 appointed dinner hour, we walked back to the trashy Main Street and had dinner at Antica Osteria Pietro. It was a cavernous restaurant but, besides Darina and me, there was only one other customer. I enjoyed a glass of white wine and ravioli with butter and sage. Darina had a beer and Pappardelle with wild boar sauce.
After deciding I would walk into Rome, I had arranged with Bags-Free for them to pick up my backpack from La Rocchetta since already they had to deliver my suitcase, which they’d been holding for me since Lucca, to the Beehive in Rome. I had to leave 180€ in cash for them in a plastic baggie attached to my backpack, so I made a video of me putting the cash into the bag in case someone absconded with the money.
We went to bed early to prepare for our final walk into Rome on Friday.
Steps: 9,769; Miles: 4.14. No Stage Walk today for me. I took the bus while Darina walked.
Weather (La Giustiniana): High 90°, Low 64°. Sunny.
The Via Francigena is an ancient road and pilgrimage route that runs from Canterbury, England, through France and Switzerland, to Rome and then to Apulia, Italy, where there were ports of embarkation for the Holy Land. In around 990, Archbishop Sigeric journeyed from Canterbury to Rome and back, but only documented his itinerary on the return journey, taken in 80 stages averaging about 12 miles (20 km) a day, for a total of some 1,100 miles (1,700 km).
This is the continuing saga of our attempt to walk the stages from Lucca to Rome, which are, in total, about 255.07 miles (410.5 km). Since we had to cut out stages due to time constraints, our actual goal was to walk 211.77 miles ( 340.8 km).
Running tally: (Day 12 of walking): 117.45 /211.77 miles (188.99/340.8 km).
This post is in response to Jo’s Monday Walk: Laranjeira.
~ wander.essence ~ 
You must be logged in to post a comment.