10 years ago, the adventure began. Diane proposed we do this “walk” across Spain, the Camino Frances. 500 miles?  Sure, why not!

We had an amazing time and looked for the next one. Well, Spain is littered with these beautiful walks, so in 2016 we opted for the Camino del Norte, plus the Camino Finnesterre, for 600 more miles! Yes, beautiful!

We hadn’t exhausted our interest, so … There’s a Chemin de St Jacques that crosses half of France and leads to the beginning of the Camino Frances. In 2018, we walked that for 450 miles.

2019 brought a change. Friends had told us about a Via Francigena walk that goes from England southward to Rome. The final 250 miles (Lucca to Rome) sounded interesting, so we were off to Italy.

Then, the pandemic. Nothing to do but dream of what’s next. As Bill and Diane looked at the map of Europe, we saw that we were closing in on a “continental crossing”, from the Atlantic Ocean (west coat of Spain) to Rome! All we had to do is fill in the blanks!

2022 the pandemic abated and we were off again! We chose to finish crossing France (Geneva to Le Puy, France). That stretch would give us crossings of all of France, and 2 complete crossings of Spain. 300 miles of French hiking later, we had France “crossed”.

2023 took us to Geneva, with the intent to walk around the lake (of that name) and head south over the Alps to Italy. Another 300 miles and we were in Pavia, Italy!

So, that brings us to Pavia, Italy to fill in the the last “gap”. We are now traveling to Pavia, to make the walk to Lucca, our 2019 starting place.

What’s it all look like? See the map below (click on it to expand the view).

All we have to do now, is do that walk. Things have a way of not being as simple 🙃 as you think.

We’ll see.

And here we are with the first step, getting to the airport. Thanks to our daughter, Stephanie, we arrived safe and sound!

Arrivederci e benvenuti in Italia (well, almost)!