My ambition is to link Santiago de Compostela to Rome, of which about half has been done by walking the Camino Frances in 2017, and the via Francigena in 2019. The missing piece is Pamplona, Spain, to Sarzana, Italy. The Arles to Puente de la Reina (near Pamplona) section is known as the via Tolosana – or voie d’Arles to the French – until it gets to the Spanish border, when it becomes the Camino d’Aragonese.
The Camino Frances has four traditional starting points: Paris, Vezelay, Le Puy, and Arles. The first three all pass through St Jean pied de port, which has won the popularity contest and is generally now referred to as the starting point of the Camino Frances. Of course, many Europeans still start their pilgrimages from their front door and connect into the better documented routes as convenient.
The Arles route passes through Somport Pass, a few days walk east of Pamplona. To add to the challenge, I’m walking the route backwards, although in days of olde, pilgrims, once their destination was reached, still had to turn around and walk home again! The very good Buen Camino app assumes that pilgrims are eastbound, as does the only guidebook, published by Miam Miam Dodo. It is also only available in French as a locked pdf file, which prevents on copying sections into Google translate or similar. As I’ve said before, if a pilgrimage was easy, everyone would be doing one!
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