Day 2: Stage 1: London - Farnham - Chilworth: Sun & Cloud, 27°, 23 kms.

St. Paul’s to St. Peter’s: Unexpected Italian Encounters!

After yet another interesting night of jet lag sleep, we were up early, prepared our bags, and went downstairs for another lovely breakfast. After saying our goodbyes we headed down the road to the tube station where Annemarie had figured out that we could catch an underground tube up to Waterloo station and pick up our train there instead of from Vauxhall Station. Turned out really well and we caught our train with about five minutes to spare. Just over an hour later we arrived at Farnham (the left side of the map with a little red S).

Stepping back a bit, one of the things I didn’t cover during my post yesterday was that we actually officially started our walk at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Two years ago I had planned to start there to walk to Rome and Annemarie encourage me to again go there to get our first stamp in our credentials. So we did! It took us a while to find the right place to get a stamp in our credentials. After many blank looks we were eventually directed under the church where we met a lovely woman who just happened to be from Italy and was working in the gift shop under the cathedral. It turned out that she had walked a part of the Via Francigena and she knew exactly what we were looking for! Some might suggest that this was just a coincidence, but I think not.

Of course by now after many walks we’ve learned that the start and end points are really just points on the map, waypoints on a long journey. What really matters (at least to me) is what lies between those points and what lessons will I learn along the way? I guess something to be discovered during the coming weeks. 

Arriving at Farnham we took a few moments to get our gear sorted out…

…then headed off to the beginning of the North Downs Way where we stopped for a couple of requisite pictures for posterity. 

And then we were finally off! 

The walking was quite lovely. There were long wooded stretches and beautiful long fields to wander along.

With temperatures up to 40° last month in this area it’s extremely dry and the corn corps seem to be stunted, though this could simply be a late planting. 

What great skies!

There were many types of gates to pass through. Some were very old and not designed for people carrying packs, forcing us to climb over the fence alongside it. Others like the one in the photo below were super convenient for walkers to pass through.

Clearly there weren’t too many people finding this campsite to be quite so magical as hoped!

We passed quite a number of large homes with property along the walk, and while they were quite beautiful I really found the smaller quaint homes to be more to my liking. They seem to suit the countryside we were walking through.

At Puttenham we caught up to four other walkers who indicated that they were walking for just three days. As often happens when meeting other walkers, starting points and destinations are often discussed. When Claudio who is from Italy found out I was walking the Via Francigena he was delighted. It turns out that Claudio lives right on the VF in northern Italy in the town of Piverone where I expect to be sometime in September. He was pretty pleased tell me about his area including its glacial history. Running into Claudio on the first stage of a walk leading to Rome sort of helped to make it feel like this was meant to be. Coincidence you say? I think not! That’s twice in 24 hours that we’ve met someone from Italia who has a direct affiliation with the VF!  

So far the walk hasn’t been too difficult with the only real challenge the soft sandy trails that we had to negotiate during the last half of the stage. Walking soft sand is not our favourite, but after reminding ourselves that had of been raining it would’ve been much worse we carried on much happier! 

I had a jetlag moment today. A cyclist approaching from behind us called out “on your left”. Ever since we arrived in Britain a couple of days ago I’ve been playing games in my head to make sure that we’re walking and crossing streets look in the right way and on the right side of the road. When he called out that he was on my left it took me a moment to figure out where he was really located. He was in fact, on my left! We had a good laugh.

We stopped for lunch late in the stage today with about 5 km to go. Having started late I encouraged us to move on further before stopping at The Old Ship Inn. The reason this is interesting is because when we were looking into this route at home we discovered that this route had a special sponsorship affiliation with many of the regional breweries. They had come up with a program called Ale of the Trail. 

By participating a small amount of money from the sale of each beer goes towards the cost of maintaining the NDW. I am quite delighted to help out! 

The rest of the walk was quite pleasant, though a bit longer than I calculated using a ruler on various maps on my computer screen. Without a guide I had to estimate distances. Today was supposed to be 21 km. It was in fact 23 km. Not a very big error on my part.

This is where we are hanging out tonight, unfortunately well down below the trail as there was no place to stay close to the path. We sourced accommodations before we left home for this walk, often 1 to 2 km off the North Downs Way. It’s a good thing that we did because prices of skyrocketed since we made our bookings some five months ago.

And that’s it for today. We have dinner to look forward to and I have pre-ordered a typical British breakfast which I’m going to enjoy eating very much! After all, all we have to do tomorrow is simply walk.

Loved this sign!