In September of 2024, two men set off on an epic journey to cycle the length of an ancient pilgrim route: The Via Francigena.
The Via Francigena is one of many pilgrim routes of Europe, some of the more popular ones include the Camino de Santiago and the Camino Portuges.
Leon and Dylan have backgrounds in Archaeology and History respectively, which was part of the reason why they decided to embark on this pilgrimage, to experience how medieval pilgrims traveled.
This is the first of two parts covering our experience, covering the stretch from Canterbury to Arras.
We hope that this video inspires more people to undertake this journey.
[Music] let’s go we are going it’s time to find God
time to find God and most of all as we all know it is pilgrim time so Dylan uh tell us where we’re going so this first day so I’m on my way to DA the fabled small town of Da Castle white cliffs but uh we’re doing a we’re beginning a journey hundreds of thousands in for us which is the French and this is the first day so one of the first uh one of the first popular pilgrims who went on the via uh was the famous Archbishop of Canterbury isn’t that right what’s his name cigar
cigar yes now he went on a horse we don’t have horses so we’ve opted for bikes instead you could argue that that’s the uh 21st century equivalent of a horse vent pilgrim 101
oh yeah play what professor Leighton no I’ve never played it it’s like a puzzle game all the environments are like based on villages and town
patrick’s born this is where Patrick was born
cigarette might have come here
cigarette might have come here where do you think Patrick lived uh probably this village but I’m sure it’s this way
i’m sure it’s this way unless it’s the other way in that case I’m not sure uh yes it is this way because this is St mary’s Church from which we can collect uh some pilgrim stamps unfortunately we do not have time for that right now it’s still shut
and it’s also shut yes so we just walked through a field it wasn’t easy there’s no path but now we’ve gotten to this point where there’s a topographic map of the entire journey we’re going to be taking so this is where we are that’s Canterbury right over there no wait it’s right over there somewhere then uh Oh losing focus
check out the consoles so this is France it’s going to be nice and flat and then we get to this and that’s the Alps so that’s going to be a bit hard but hopefully we’re going to be prepared for it by the time we get there isn’t that right Dylan woohoo yeah so we’re trying to make it to the ferry on time the ferry is at what time 1:40 right
no the ferry is at um 1:45 we got to get there at 12:15 or before that’s checking and it is 10:30 now so we’ve got about an hour and a half hour 45 minutes to reach Dover we’re about halfway through from Dover well from yeah Canterbury to do well
so hopefully we’re going to make it we’ve got a lively path in front of us had to stop a couple of times to do some minor repairs and stuff but uh we’re looking good [Music] [Music] so we’ve arrived in Dover on time for the ferry now Dover is one of those places that used to be a uh quite a popular seaside resort town and then uh what happened was cheap tickets to Spain Greece and other destinations yes benador say
Benadorm yeah so cheap plane tickets kind of these places over because now it’s actually cheaper to get to Spain than it is to do and all these people who used to go on vacation to do no longer do [Music] [Music] and there’s some more video logging also known as vlogging so we’ve uh we’ve reached the ferry we’ve actually uh managed to get here on time to get the earlier ferry which is quite good cuz now we’re saving a couple of hours we’re going to get some food here cuz we haven’t eaten really anything all day and we’re both pretty pretty hungry fantastic baby euro trip [Music] attention beware moving vehicles [Music] [Applause] [Music] so Cala very famously the last English possession uh in France following the end of the hundred years war lost during the reign of Bloody Mary mid- 16th century [Music] we’re in 60 fps now
oh wait
yes say something uh [Music] time to get our second stamp you
say pilgrim time
it’s pilgrim time and they should call it uh canal instead of cal so we’ve reached our final destination for today it’s a uh little town called Guinea in French if you’re English you might as well pronounce it as Guinness all right end of day one we’ve found a place to camp and a uh it’s a very nice little French uh camping spot it’s actually a five-star camping resort but we got in for free because we’re pilgrims so that’s a nice little cheat code um that’s my tent that’s Dylan’s tent um they’re the same tents we’re reorganizing our cuz we realized that we didn’t really pack appropriately so we’re going to do that we’re going to eat some food and then hopefully go to sleep all right how many meatballs do you think there are here i know probably like 18 maybe less
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
14 7 each meatball counter oh can you actually hold that
it’s pilgrim mail time [Music] say something say something [Music] maybe come on this side you come on this side yeah well we’ve just found this beautiful church over here which is also really really big it’s huge in uh a town called
Leak
leak
l I Q U E S
that’s right
lquis all right let’s go inside [Music] sure smells like a church this is huge you wouldn’t expect this from a village so small
no incredible it looks like it was part of an abbey i noticed some demolished walls over on that side outside of church so that must have been it and what’s left now is that part over there oh yeah looks like some sort of a Neo Romanesque architecture I’d say although I think I’m pretty sure the ceiling is more Gothic than Romanesque confession booth of course [Music] yeah it’s a helicopter look at that helicopter [Music] greetings so we’ve arrived to our destination and um we’ve just come into an abbey and the uh the monk here very kindly gave us accommodation so I’m just going to show you my room quickly this is one of the rooms that I will be sleeping in it doesn’t look like much on the inside but check this out check this out this is my view from my bedroom window leon’s just next door to me like look at this yeah incredible amazing i can’t believe I’m here feels like a dream we are rolling we didn’t sleep very well cuz there was a lot of mosquitoes around and
but we had a good dinner with the monks
we did have a good dinner with the monks
and it wasn’t silence
it was they were singing while we were doing
yeah that’s what’s supposed to happen as one bloke delivering a sermon
yeah so that was a very unique experience that I don’t think I’ve ever had in my life before i don’t think I’ve ever thought I would have this experience in my life but I’m sure we’ll have more of those uh along the way to Rome uh we didn’t sleep that well because there’s a ton of mosquitoes here and we both have nightmares which is pretty cool
leon was it a um what what manner was it would you say was it
it was a sleep paralysis actually my dream I had a dream that someone was stabbing me but I wasn’t myself i was a I was a noble woman
yeah yeah
and my I won’t go too into detail my dream was of a lentious nature uh definitely experience I wouldn’t want to repeat in real life it was uh not not good for the soul let’s put it that way
not holy
not holy at all not for a place like this you know
but the beds weren’t that good to be fair
oh there’s a rooster outside oh yeah a if you will um of the bird type of course now today we’re going to try and cycle about 60 km to AA which is a pilgrim center with a cathedral supposed to be quite a big town as well with all the facilities that we will need if not then we’ll just uh try to camp somewhere along the way but if we do reach Ara then we’re going to stay there for two nights explore the city for a bit and uh yeah I’m sure we’ll get some nice recordings from that
civ as the French say
as the French say
yeah and on that jolly note
remember it’s pilgrim time
what time is it
it’s pilgrim’s time yeah I suppose I don’t think they do leave them open though [Music] let’s film a little update [Applause] all right end of day three uh we didn’t make it to Aha
or Aras
aras as they just said yeah
our Spartan hosts yes our Spartan hosts uh so we’re camping at a pilgrimage campsite which was described as uh very Spartan that means very bare bones
which I didn’t know until five minutes ago actually
all right so the guy is showing us where the toilets are i’ll keep it rolling all right okay well I suppose it’s all up to me now to keep everybody entertained so it was a tough day progress wasn’t exactly what we expected it to be you know um rolling green French Hills beautiful countryside but the problem with rolling hills is uh the hills go down but they sure go up that’s the thing so we’re dreading the Alps right now uh but we’re hoping this uh France section is going to be like a nice warmup going to build us up some uh some muscle some mental fortitude you know all this sort of thing um so we’re looking at about 20 miles to uh to Arass tomorrow that’s the uh that’s the plan 20 miles which is what’s that like 32 km or something like that something like this and when we get there we’re going to have a day off because it’s been very difficult it’s been very very hard and our progress hasn’t been exactly what we expected it to be thinking a lot about my girlfriend thinking a lot about my family as well it’s a good time for self-reflection self-discovery that’s what a pilgrimage ultimately is i suppose it’s a Oxford English dictionary definition a pilgrimage is a religious journey in order to uh achieve or enhance spiritual enlightenment so uh we’ll see what happens you know all right second try so we are in Aras if that’s how it’s pronounced we’ve uh reached this town after about 4 hours of cycling quite hard maybe a little bit more i’m saying five yeah something like that less than six for sure
so this is a town of about 40,000 people but it looks a lot bigger um the buildings are quite tall as you can see that’s the town hall or the city lodge whatever
that’s Leon’s that’s what he thinks anyway
that’s my idea of it anyway now we’ve uh we wanted to reach Aras yesterday but there was no way we were going to reach it yesterday so here we are today we’re going to stay here for two nights today we’re going to just walk around a bit we’ve already done that to be fair
having a well- earned drink
we’re having a well earned drink yeah this uh this phone is propped up against the beer can and it’s not our first so we’re going to go to bed early hopefully and then uh we’re going to go and explore a bit more tomorrow hopefully go to the cathedral which is just behind
looks very NRA doesn’t it
it looks very Gothic yeah that’s right now the town hall and most of the buildings that you can see around here are Flemish this was actually mostly destroyed during World War I because Arass is actually quite close to where the front was so this was mostly destroyed after the war and then rebuilt
10 km from the west
10 km from artillery came over destroyed it
destroyed everything and they rebuilt it and it looks very nice so we’re going to go and have a one more beer maybe in a pub well not a pub
one more for the road a brazerie
a brazerie a browser Z cut that out that out [Music] now it’s going to come back shut out of a rass straight out of
straight out of a rass all right so a little recap so uh we’ve had our rest day in Aras we’ve now made our first pit stop uh on the way to a rat in a little village that I can’t remember the name of
the name idea
and we’re outside the church at the moment which is which is locked spirits are high so are hopes i uh we are not unfortunately all right well we’ll catch you in Coron so now it’s pilgrim time
it’s pilgrim time heat [Music] [Applause] [Music] heat [Applause] [Music]
1 Comment
Very nice