Walking the Via Francigena from Canterbury to Rome is not for the faint-hearted, as first-time pilgrim Tamsin Treverton Jones found out. But its rewards are enormous We spent the night in a vertiginous cell high above the truffle-rich Arno valley, guests of Brother Franco at the Convento di San Francesco in San Miniato Alto. After a dawn breakfast in the vast refectory, we tiptoed through the holy doors, boots in one hand, Franco’s parting gift of a carved wooden cross on a leather thread in the other.The deserted Tuscan landscape offered cinematic vistas at every turn as we walked the spiky gravel tracks, soft sandy paths and exposed ridges of the Via Francigena towards the spa town of Gambassi Terme. Calenzano, Campriano, Coiano, Borgoforte: the names of the towns and villages ah