Personal blog: Why I’m not doing the Via Francigena, from Canterbury to Rome, and what I’m planning instead

I’ve been working on this for a bit. For about a two years now I’ve thought of the Via Francigena as ‘what I was building up to’ on the bike touring front. In the past few weeks I’ve come to accept that I’m not in a point in my life where I can do this, so I have reluctantly but firmly made some other plans which are detailed in the blog. Maybe the considerations and plans I’ve made will be useful to you, they’re written up in there.

The whole ‘yeah but is it really a proper tour?’ question has played on my mind for a while, thinking I should be trying to do something really big and tricky. It’s only now I’ve come to accept that smaller and more achievable tours are all I can do at the moment, and that’s OK. now I’ve decided to let go of the Via, the more achievable Belgian one is really starting to get me excited.

I forget which post it was but it may have been a post on this subreddit about the Via where I learned about it first. Anyway here’s an example one. https://www.reddit.com/r/bicycletouring/comments/16idz3c/bicycled_along_the_via_francigena_in_italy_in_june/