Twenty years after hiking the Camino de Santiago in Spain for the first time, we still like to hike. And Kees especially loves to conquer long distance trails. This time we decided on the Via Francigena: the Italian part of an 1,100 year old pilgrims’ trail leading from Canterbury, England all the way to Rome: 2,000 km.

Before author visits to schools across Europe we planned on doing a portion of this trail. But first we wanted to acclimatize, after flying in from Canada, and warm up our hiking muscles with a visit to Cinque Terre.