Via Francigena 2025: Via Francigena Days 23 and 24: Sarzana to Avenza & Avenza to Camaiore

Wednesday, September 10th

Today was the first day we’ve had to walk in the rain. Started out with a bit of drizzle, but not too bad. By mid-morning when we stopped for coffee, the rain had stopped enough that our rain jackets were off. Ran into Val, Gerry and Aushy at the cafe and sat with them for a bit. By the time we were ready to continue, the rain was coming down pretty hard. Donned our rain jackets and headed down the road. Thankfully, most of the terrain today was on asphalt roads, albeit sometimes flooded asphalt roads. Our greatest danger was being splashed by passing cars. Italian drivers, for the most part, don’t slow down when passing pedestrians (some won’t even move over). Walking along busy highways (which we’ve had to do a number of times on this trek) could potentially be harmful to one’s health!

One of the archways into the town
of Sarzana

Ruins of a Roman amphitheater outside
Luni

We've been seeing signposts similar
to this during our journey, but this
is the first one we've come across
made from marble

A peek into an artist's marble workshop

That's not snow on the mountains, but Carrara
marble quarries

Thursday, September 11th

Although it was overcast this morning and threatening rain in the distance, the sun was peeking out by late morning and we had a dry walk (thankfully). Our itinerary was to walk to Massa, take a train to Pietrasanta and then walk from Pietrasanta to Camaiore. The first stage to Massa was 9 miles and involved a long climb up and over a hill with some treacherous paths along the way. The reward for this long, strenuous climb was an awesome view of the Mediterranean Sea (or Ligurian Sea as it’s called in Italy).

From Massa we took a train to Pietrasanta and met up with Rich. The original plan was to have lunch in Pietrasanta and then walk the last 5.5 miles to Camaiore. By the time we got to Pietrasanta and then waited for Rich’s train to arrive from Avenza, it was after 2:00 pm. After some debate and worry about what time we’d arrive in Camaiore if we ate lunch and then walked, we decided to take a bus instead.

According to the information we had, the next bus for Camaiore left at 2:35 pm so we had to hot-foot it down to the bus terminal, buy our tickets and then wait for our bus, which never showed up (don’t know if our online app was wrong about where we were to catch the bus or what the issue was). After talking to a couple of the bus drivers we ended up taking the bus to Lido di Camaiore (literally, the “beach of Camaiore”) and then transferring to another bus which took us to our destination. Although it was a roundabout way to get there and took us longer than expected, we still arrived in Camaiore at least 2 hours before we would have had we walked.