The original VF was made by the Archbishop of Canterbury around 950 AD. Presumably he went by the easiest and most direct route. The modern VF still goes from Caterbury to Rome but often deviates from his path. The reason is that the most direct paths are now often covered by the major highways. Highway engineers also like to take the easiest and most direct path. This makes for unpleasant walking. So most of the VF is not the original path. This makes it less “authentic” but a better walk.
The “Lightfoot” guide is one of the most popular VF guides and has been for 10 years. It defines a VF path and publishes guide books for it and provides GPX tracks for the path. In the past few years the EAVF (European Accociation for the VF) has taken a leading role in improving the VF. One way they do this is to reroute the path away from roads and onto nicer walking paths. Usually this makes the path longer but nicer. They also provide a set of GPX tracks.
Sometimes both Lightfoot and the EAVF provide alternate tracks for some parts. As a result there are many variants of the VF. We have both the EAVF and Lightfoot tracks on our phones. Usually Wynette runs the EAVF track and I run the Lightfoot track (on our respective Track Navigotor apps).
Each day we look at the two tracks and any differences and decide which one we want to take. Since we like short we often take the shorter Lightfoot tracks and do a little more road walking. Actually we like walking past peoples’ houses so it fits our tastes better.
We will discuss “authenticity” issues later in this blog but we can say now that the VF is more like the Portuguese Camino than the Camino Frances. The Camino Frances mostly follows the original pilgrimage path. The Portuguese Camino is more of a pleasant walk through Portugal and frequently deviates significantly from the original path.