The via Francigena. 1000 kilometres on foot from the Gran San Bernardo to Rome
This book was, unfortunately, pretty useless. I made an effort to hunt it down in Milan before I started the trail but it turned out to be a waste of time. There are plenty of apps and online information that I relied upon, and this just became additional weight.
The route is broken down into 45 stages, and each is presented with data in 6 sections.
1. Map
The scale of the map is far too small for this image to be of any use, and the fat line that is drawn to show the path obscures any detail that might be possible to make out. This is worse in large towns where there are many streets and signage tends to be poor.
2. Altimetry: distance, altitude, locations
The altitude map is useful as a reference to determine how difficult a stage is, but the locations on the graph often do not match to any labelled on the map or in the text, and vice versa.
3. Distance and difficulty summary
The ‘summary' of the stages did not match with my experience, and seems mainly to reflect the number of miles. For example, a 16km stage with a lot of steep and slippery climbs is graded ‘easy', while a 30km flat stomp on graded tracks is ‘strenuous' or ‘demanding'.
4. Transport, facilities, accommodation
Quite useful to get a sense of what facilities will be available on the route, though Italy being Italy, there are no guarantees that the advertised supermarkets or grocers will be open when you arrive. Accommodation details were often wrong - I found problems with addresses, phone numbers and emails, and came to rely on more up to date information online.
5. Route description
This section generally had me tearing my hair out with frustration. At well signposted stretches it would give lots of detail, and when the arrows disappeared the book would say ‘follow the arrows'. Descriptions are littered with confusion and error:
* “After the underpass, leave the road to the right on a gravel track the other side of the motorway” - the gravel track is THIS side of the motorway, BEFORE the underpass
* At a roundabout with 4 exits the book advises that you “turn right”
* “At via Palermo head down into town...” - but at the junction that street goes up in both directions! Which way is town, right or left?
* Often vague sentences such as “Follow [street] in [compass direction]” are used for junctions where street names are not visible and there are 3 directions to choose from. The frustration in most cases is that there are always easier and clearer descriptions that could have been provided, such as “Follow the canal”!
6. Significant sites and monuments to visit
Many of these describe ancient monuments that are locked, or closed, or no longer exist. Useful to get a quick list of top sites in larger towns (Lucca, Sienna etc).
Other pilgrims were carrying similar looking books by the same publisher which had very detailed hand-drawn maps which looked to be very useful, so note that this review refers only to this specific version. Note, however, that there are at least 2 map applications available for iPhone and Android that are far more useful for navigation, especially when you're lost.