The Via Francigena - 2,136 km from Canterbury to Rome

In the year 990, Sigeric the Serious — an excellent name for an archbishop — walked from Canterbury to Rome to collect his pallium, and on the way home had someone write down every place he stopped for the night. Seventy-nine stops, in order, from Rome back to the Channel. That list is the reason we can still trace the Via Francigena today, and it is possibly the earliest route file in existence, give or take a thousand years of file format changes.

The route from Canterbury to Rome

You can now virtually run the way the pilgrims went, it is 2,136 km (1,327 miles) from Canterbury to Rome. You cross northern France, climb into Switzerland and over the Great St Bernard Pass, drop into the Aosta Valley and then take the long way down through Tuscany — Siena, San Gimignano, the cypress hills — before the last stretch into Rome. It is the rare long route where the middle is as good as the ends.

How long does it take?

We like it as a first big goal, because the number is achievable without being trivial. With a weekly running milage of 40 km a week it'll take you about a year. That is long enough that you will run it through at least two changes of season, which is really the test: anyone can run in August, the route gets built in the dark weeks of January (or the other way around for our friends down under).

Sigeric covered the return leg in about eighty days. You have as long as you want. See the Via Francigena — and when you finish it, Te Araroa is the natural next size up.