Читать книгу The Way of St Francis. Via di Francesco: From Florence to Assisi and Rome онлайн

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It would be difficult if not impossible to source and then carry the paper maps required to cover the entire route. Detailed Italian hiking maps are hard to come by, and, besides, a comprehensive coverage would involve a great many individual sheets – too many, indeed, to make it a practical option.

Although walking directions are given in great detail in this guide, and each stage includes a 1:50,000 ‘overview’ map, it may ease worries to have a GPS or GPS-equipped smartphone application for additional help. GPX tracks for the entire walk can be downloaded at www.cicerone.co.uk. High-quality smartphone navigation apps like Guru Maps, Gaia GPS, AllTrails and others allow tracks to be easily downloaded onto your smartphone. When shopping for a GPS app, make sure to find one that allows downloadable maps so that it is not necessary to be connected to a cell service while hiking.

Italy has an extensive system of hiking trails, and often the route follows portions of this network. Maintained by volunteers of the Club Alpino Italiano (CAI), the trails are marked in horizontal red-and-white stripes, often with the trail number superimposed in black marker. In this book, all references to CAI trails in walking directions refer to the red-and-white striped markings. CAI trails are usually identified in Open Cycle Maps, which makes it an excellent base map resource for GPS users.