Day 50: La Storta to Rome

This morning, I was humbled and inspired by a solo French pilgrim who is just a few weeks away from her 80 birthday and had, from what I could gather, walked from Vercelli to finish the VF in Rome today! What a legend. Then, as I was on the Way, I met up with an American mother and daughter team (the little one was only 8 or 9) whom I obviously fell in love with as well. The walk today was much better than I expected. Yes, there was a fair amount of road walking, particularly at the start and at the end, but the middle was through two nature reserves (dell Insugherata and di Monte Mario). The first nature reserve was so funny, it was so overgrown - you had to fight your way through and the second ended with a locked gate that I might have been able to circumvent if I'd let myself take a step back and really look at my map, but me being me and on a mission to get to Saint Peter's Square, I decided to climb over (no mean feat, I can assure you). When I got to Saint Peter's Square, my credential got me past the line for Saint Peter's Basilica (which was huge), and onto the "Prayer Path" (for pilgrims), through security (Italian police, who confiscated my knife and gave it back to me as I left) and I went straight to the office (again credential only access) to collect my testimonium. After that, I WhatsApp called Alex, Marian, Bernadette, and Jenny to celebrate. Unfortunately, they couldn't hear me, but we all shared the joy! Yes, it was hot, yes, it was hard today - the VF in Italy has made me work for every metre - but I'm beside myself with joy that I've been able to do this. I don't care how hard it was, it was worth every step.
P.S. for the record; I walked 994 km this leg of the pilgrimage.Read more