Cammino di San Benedetto

Norcia needs little introduction as a starting point: the birthplace of St Benedict and St Scholastica, the market town for the Norcina black truffle, and the kind of Italian hill town that makes you want to immediately reorganise your life. The route leaves the medieval walls and climbs into the Valnerina, an Umbrian river gorge of exceptional beauty.

The stage follows mule paths and shepherd tracks through a landscape shaped by centuries of transhumance. Villages on this section are tiny and largely unchanged since the medieval period. The arrival at Cascia — home to the shrine of St Rita, patron saint of impossible causes — marks a shift from Benedictine to Augustinian sacred geography.

The second stage cuts through the Selva di Meana — one of the largest surviving old-growth forests in the Apennines — before climbing to the dramatic hilltop village of Monteleone di Spoleto.

Monteleone is best known for the Chariot of Monteleone, an Etruscan ceremonial chariot discovered in a burial mound here in 1902. The original is in the Metropolitan Museum in New York; a reproduction is displayed in the municipal museum. The view from the village ramparts over the valleys below is exceptional at any time of year.

The long descent to the Nera river valley at Scheggino is one of the visual highlights of the entire Cammino di San Benedetto. The route drops over 600m through terraced olive groves and abandoned farmland, with the narrow gorge of the Valnerina appearing gradually below.

Scheggino is a walled village on the Nera riverbank, tiny and largely tourist-free — a good example of the quiet, off-circuit Italy that this cammino specialises in. The local restaurant serves freshwater crayfish (gamberi di fiume) from the Nera, a regional speciality worth timing a reservation for.