I headed off with Beatrice and Emanuela again this morning . We passed through the pretty historic centre of Formello and back onto the Via Francigena towards Rome.

 Given we had walked a bit further yesterday and Rome was only about 30km away, I decided to skip the last stopover at La Storta and head straight for Rome. We passed through fine very pretty countryside before hitting the outer burbs of Rome .

 The rest of the walk was basically urban. There were some very busy roads, mostly with footpaths. The problem was that the footpaths kept disappearing on one side of the road and appearing on the other side . This meant I had to scuttle across at times 4 busy lanes a number of times. I finally reached Monte Mario , or Mons Gaudi (the hill of joy ) as it was known to medieval pilgrims . From here pilgrims would get their first view of Saint Peter’s after months of travel.

  It was only a few kilometers from here to Saint Peter’s and the end of my walk.

 I did have a few more kilometers to go to reach the hostel in Trastevere where I had a long interesting conversation with Padre Paolo who comes from the Veneto. We had the same foot washing ceremony as I had back in Abadia ad Isola as the hostel is run by the same confraternity, and a pleasant dinner with the volunteers.

My washing had a great. backdrop today !

Tomorrow I’ll be off to the Vatican  to collect my Testimonium.