Long Rider to Rome

Another corner, another surprise on the other side: a photographer standing at the roadside with a bride and groom, he in a dark suit, she in a floaty dress as pristine as the snows of Mont Blanc and cut extremely low. They're delighted to see us and it seems we've turned up right on cue: 'Madame, may we photograph your horse with us?' 'No problem,' I say. Leo strides suavely up to the bride and buries his nose in her cleavage, snuffling lasciviously… The camera is clicking as I haul him back, and the reason for his over-familiar behaviour is clenched in his teeth -- the bride's corsage of white roses. I yank them out of his mouth and hand back some tattered stalks, and luckily she sees the funny side. All the same, it would probably be politic to remove him before she also notices the green slobber trickling down her dress.'Still hooked on adventure after their long pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, a few years later Mefo Phillips and her spotted horse Leo set off again from Canterbury, this time heading for Rome, with Mefo's husband Peter once more trying to keep track of them in Bessie the Bedford horsebox. Turning her back on the main route of the Via Francigena through France and Switzerland, she opted instead for the road less travelled, a secondary pilgrim route that climbed directly over the French border pass at Mont Cenis into Italy. Their journey turned out to be far more challenging than the previous one, with no signage between Canterbury and Italy, no pilgrim infrastructure, incomprehensible maps, even a heartstopping fall down a ravine; and the weather was frequently terrible, ranging from violent storms in the Alps to days of desiccating heat in the Po River valley. But it was a journey of great highs as well as lows: the unexpected view of the…