Once that I’ve chosen the route I wanted to follow, I immediately started looking for the necessary information and some bibliography. Obviously, it won’t be possible to follow a single guide, but to join different sources: it will be a long job… But let’s see, for the benefit of those who want to follow the same path in the future. Some of the sources I’ve found can be found in a library and some of them on the Internet.

Of course, we must consider that the Internet is continually updated, and sometimes you can also read the date of the last update: the information can be very precise. In the meanwhile, the paper guide are updated  to the day of the publication. So, it is better that the pilgrim is well attentive to the reliability of the various sources he’s consulting.

Section 1: from Milan to Montgenevre along the Via Francigena

Starting from Milan towards Pavia, you can follow the path that connects these two cities, running along the Naviglio Pavese. From Pavia on, you can follow the Via Francigena backwards, towards the Montgenevre. For information about the route I bought the “Guida alla Via Francigena” edited by Monica d’Atti and Franco Cinti for Terre di Mezzo (4th edition, April 2012). Updates on accommodation offered to the pilgrims  are constantly made available by the authors at the link http://www.confraternitadisanjacopo.it/Francigena/guida/newsospitalita.htm and I recommend to consult this page before leaving.

However, on the Internet you can find several useful things: first, in the Italian section of the website www.camminando.eu, you can find the updated guides of some Italian routes, among which there is the Via Francigena: Flavio Vandoni, walker and hospitalero, is also happy to provide news and suggestions.

Another useful source is the www.viefrancigene.it website: you can download the list of pilgrim accommodation. Unfortunately, this useful list will guide us only to Vercelli, where the “official” Via Francigena goes up to the Great St. Bernard, but we need to go westward to the Montgenevre.

The Associazione Movimento Lento has also created a group, at this link, inside the Couchsurfing website where pilgrims can ask for hospitality to other members of the community.

Section 2: from the Montgenevre to Arles along the Via Domitia

This section, which long less than 500 km, is the first route that I will walk in French land: it’s an itinerary with a great history and I’m very happy of walking it.

To learn something more, I purchased (on Amazon) the guide “La Via Domitia vers Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle ou vers Rome” by Jean-Yves Grégoire, published by Rando éditions. It is a small and light book, equipped with maps, route descriptions, historical notes and cultural information on the places to visit. It seems very good, but I will verify it on the ground. The guide does not slavishly follow the GR653D, which is the hiking trail that connects the Montgenevre to Arles: it leaves the trail here and there to meet the cultural (and physical) needs of the pilgrim, who is not always a professional hiker, and tries to trace as far as possible the old Roman route.

If you want to rely on the GR653D all the way, you can buy its Topoguide, published by FFRandonnée. Currently, there are no Italian guides for this route, but you can find some alternative in English.

Here again, the site www.camminando.eu comes to rescue the pilgrim, making available for free download the guides written by Flavio Vandoni, updated annually, reporting maps, a description of the route and the indication of the accommodation for pilgrims.

In France there are some very active and helpful Associations of Friends of the Camino or Friend of St. James: on their websites they often provide the pilgrims with guides and lists of accommodation, which are very useful to those who decide to travel along these routes. This also applies to the Via Domitia. You can find useful information for the whole stretch from Montgenevre to Arles here:  http://www.compostelle-paca-corse.info/. In the section “Hébergements”, you can download the list of pilgrim accommodation and of the responsible of the single regions. The site shows the date of the update of the published information.

Section 3: From Arles to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port

For this stretch of way, I will follow the Voie du Piémont Pyrénéen. Who wish to follow the Via Tolosana, they can refer to the guide “Miam Miam Dodo Saint Jacques de Compostelle, La Voie d’Arles/Camino Aragonés GR653” by Mireille Retail, published by Les Éditions du Vieux Crayon. taking care to look for some information on the historical and cultural places to visit, since the Miam Miam Dodo are great for the itinerary and the accommodation, but don’t cover the cultural aspects. Currently, there are no guides in Italian for this route.

For what is about the Voie du Piémont Pyrénéen, waiting for the guide of this Camino that is going to be published by Rando Édition, I got all the information I wanted on the Internet. The first reference is, once again, the website www.camminando.eu. There, you can find some different guides: one for the route from Arles to Lourdes and than all the choices you can make to rejoin the Camino Francés on the Pyrenees (the Somport Pass along the Camino Aragonés, the Cize Pass to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, the Camino of the Baztan). Thanks to this source, we will also be able to go from Arles to Carcassonne (the only section where there is no really consolidated route).

In this case too, the Associations of the Friends of the Camino are precious: the site we need is  http://vppyr.free.fr/vpp.php. In the section Partir>Les étapes, you will find a description stage per stage of the route from Narbonne to Roncesvalles. A list of the accommodation is available from the section Partir>Documents. Among the documents, you can also find a carnet du pèlerin  with the maps and simplest and most useful information.

Section 4: from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Santiago de Compostela, along the Camino Francés and to Fisterra, along the Camino Fisterrano

From Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port starts the “classic” route of the Camino Francés to Santiago de Compostela, you probably will already know it, but you never know… so… just in case: you will find a lot of guide books to this route in all the libraries around the world and you will need them just to know that you have a guide in your backpack and what you want to visit at the end of the daily walk.  It’s impossible to get lost on the French Way (you need to follow the yellow arrows and the blue and yellow shells!). Besides, when you will arrive in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, at the accueil pèlerins, they will provide you the most useful things: a complete list of the albergues with the distances from one to the next one and the elevation profile of the whole Camino.

If you really want to have a paper guide and you are Italian, you can download it in PDF from the site of the PellegriniBelluno. If you are English native speakers, you can download this version always in PDF (it is made available by Greg, a pilgrim like you and me, who committed himself to the translation of the original Spanish guide by Eroski, that you can find here).