Category Archives: Walking

Day 2 – Corniglia to Vernazza – It ain’t Easy

4 Replies

Monday 15 June 2025* – I expect you’re on tent hooks, waiting to hear whether we took the easy way today or not. I’m hoping the ambiguity of the headline will pique your curiosity for a little longer.

In the interim, I thought I might expand a little upon the group, as the eight of us, plus Rebecca, Tomaso and Trevor, were beginning to get to know each other better. The most important thing is that the group is one of great affability, possibly because all of us punters are pretty much of the same (“a certain”) age, at least as far as inference will take us, since perish the thought that one should actually ask how old someone is. Jane and I are the only couple among the group; everyone else is a solo traveller, though not necessarily (again, one doesn’t ask) single; and I am not the token male, since there’s one other chap in the group. A couple of them are really well ‘ard and always up for the longer, more challenging of the two walks on offer; among the rest, the exercise preference varies from low to medium. After yesterday’s expedition, Jane and I have decided that we belong in this latter group. A few have some previous with HF Holidays, which makes the fact that they have come on another one a source of comfort to us newbies. Fundamentally we all get on really well, which is lovely.

Our guides are Rebecca,

a Yorkshire lass who married a local (who used to own the hotel we’re staying in, by the way) and who exudes laughter, energy and positivity, and Tomaso,

who is astonishingly knowledgeable about all sorts of things to do with the region and the country, being a qualified guide for no fewer than half of the twenty regions of Italy.

All we had to do was to decide whether to take the longer or shorter walk today. The choice was between an 8km or a 12km walk. In the UK, the longer distance is something we would undertake without pause for thought – on our Camino and Francigena walks, our daily average was 20km. But then again, there was yesterday’s lesson about Cinque Terre walking – the choice is not between “easy” and “hard”, but between “shorter” and longer”.

Reader, we chose the shorter one, from Corniglia, the middle of the five Cinque Terre villages, to Vernazza, its next door neighbour to the north west. And it was still hard. And it taught us some more lessons about walking in the Cinque Terre region. Since we’d started in Monterosso and gone northwards, yesterday’s walk had not actually been in the official Cinque Terre region, a national park which extends south-east from Monterosso down to Riomaggiore. So, today’s walk was our first walk actually in the Cinque Terre National Park.

I had had a sort of hazy mental picture of our week spent on reasonably gentle strolls between neighbouring villages which were only a few kilometres apart. After all, if you go on to Garmin Connect and request a hiking route across all five villages, you get this:

Admittedly there’s a lumpy bit in the middle (the coastal path is closed at the moment due to landslides, so you have to go into the hills), but the whole thing is 15km and involves less than a kilometre’s ascent. It’s just a stiff day’s walk, surely? What could possibly go wrong?

Quite a lot, as it turns out. For example, you need a permit. Who knew? Rebecca had given us a slip of paper on yesterday evening’s briefing which she said was absolutely necessary to be able to do today’s walk, and that we absolutely must not lose it and absolutely must have it with us at all times. (It’s still wedged in my phone case, a week later; I must get round to digging it out at some stage.) It was a dual-purpose pass, allowing us unlimited rail travel between the villages as well as entry to the Cinque Terre, which, as I’ve said earlier, is a National Park. I just hadn’t realised that its National Park status meant that access could be restricted.  The paper that Rebecca handed out was a two-day permit for the park plus a two-day rail pass for the area. A fairly important piece of paper, then.

As well as the pass, we were given a warning about pickpockets, who can be active around the stations. The advice was not to wear the backpack, as things could be taken, literally, behind your back.

Tomaso was our guide for the day, and one of the first things he told us was some background about getting between the villages. Initially, the only way had been by sea, until Victorian times, when railway tunnels were bludgeoned through the hills that separate them. (This sounds like a good idea but, ironically, wasn’t, as I’ll explain in a later post, if I remember.) Today’s railway doesn’t follow the original rail route, but the principle is the same; the railway is the best way to get between the villages and the journey from one end to the other takes just a few minutes. By road, it would take ages, on roads so rudimentary that Google Maps won’t actually suggest them as a driving route. On foot, as we discovered yesterday, it’s hard work involving walking up at least one steep hill and then down again.

Most of the villages are coastal villages, which stretch along river valleys perpendicular to the coastline back towards the hills. Our starting point today was Corniglia, which is the exception, because the lowest point of the village is about 90m above sea level – it’s perched on a hillside. Its train station, however, is at the same level as all the other stations – near sea level. So, having taken the 0849 “Cinque Terre Express” train from Bonassola to Corniglia, which was busy but not ridiculously so, the first thing we had to do was to get from the station to the village. This involves walking to the end of the platform

and then up some steps.

Let me just emphasise the steps for you.

Those are the visible ones, but, like Groucho Marx’s principles, there are others, and these can’t easily be seen. I believe that there is a bus service, but our hardy group of five decided that we should walk up. I counted the steps, mainly to distract myself from the rigours of the task at hand, or rather at foot.  At exactly 100 steps, there’s a bench, but it was occupied by a chap who was selling tat, or who would have been had he not been busy talking on his phone. At about 150 steps, one gets this view back, showing that there are still vine terraces in operation today.

At about 250 steps, there’s another bench

and it marks about two-thirds of the way up. From here, you can see the back end of the next Cinque Terre village to the south east, Manarola.

I counted 380 steps, which agrees approximately with one of the official versions of how many steps there actually are. A sod of a lot of ’em, that’s for sure.

We took a short stroll round Corniglia, stopping outside its church, Chiesa Di San Pietro.

From the outside, we could see stained glass

so we looked in.

The Cinque Terre villages are in the Liguria region of Italy, and one of the architectural characteristics of the region is a widespread use of trompe l’oeil to decorate the buildings. There really is very high quality work on display.

The shutters are real, but the brickwork is painted.

Being so high up, there are some nice little vignettes on offer to the alert photographer, such as this one,

whose colours and composition particularly appealed to me. The town itself is picturesque

with some original shopfronts still visible,

and it soon becomes clear what local produce the town is proud of.

The town has a pretty central square

with a First World War Memorial statue at its centre which has a rather haunting visage.

We stopped for coffee at a recently-opened, modern coffee shop

which provided coffee Italian-style, meaning very tasty but not hot enough. I think Italians view coffee as something you neck in passing rather than a treat to be savoured (there was nowhere to sit in this place), so no matter how often one asks for it “molto calda”, it comes only lukewarm, which is a shame.  It’s also about time that the flat white was accepted among Italian coffee shops, as this is easier to ask for than a latte macchiato con doppio espresso.

We continued through the picturesque corners of this pretty town

getting occasional views along the coast back towards Monterosso

and up the hills to the village that has grown up around the Church of the Madonna of San Bernadino.

before embarking on the real meat of the day’s walk, meaning some serious uphill work. Tomaso helpfully explained the scope of what we had to achieve, which was to get up to and past that blue house.

Yes, that one, there.

Hard work in prospect, therefore, but it did mean that we got a good view back down to Corniglia.

It also meant that we formally entered the National Park, so we had to show our passes at a checkpoint

where the strictures placed upon us were laid out,

including being abjured to wear suitable footwear.  We were all in proper walking shoes, but apparently there have been cases of people in flip-flops actually being fined! I had considered walking in Teva sandals, but was (correctly) persuaded that this was not a good idea.

Off we went, then, on a well-marked path,

which shows that the entry fee does go towards maintenance and other support infrastructure.

The path was initially some reasonably gentle steps,

but which soon became less well-structured

and considerably steeper, leading both up and down.

But mainly up.

The ascent worked us hard on a hot day (temperatures approaching 30°C) but at least gave us striking views back to Corniglia as we moved along the coast.

We were by no means the only people walking on the track,

but as it turned out, this was, relatively speaking, an uncrowded day.  We were on the sentiero azzuro, the blue path, which is probably the most popular walking route between the villages. Tomaso told us that it can get very crowded, to the point where, on some days, the authorities only allow walking in one direction. So we were lucky – just enough people to allow our “good manners” to enable a bit of a rest now and then to let others by.

We passed an installation called the “Third Paradise”

which was a rather pretentious tribute to the intersection between the natural and human worlds or some such tosh. Colourful stick, though.

We’d done the uphill work by then, so when we came to this,

“Il Gabbiano”, The Seagull, which markets itself as the half way point, the natural thing would have been to declare some kind of a rest stop. Sadly, Tomaso seems immune to these sorts of blandishments, and so we carried on, starting our descent past a (closed) tourist information office,

another possible rest stop

where we could even have had a game of darts had we so wished,

or joined a teddy bears’ picnic

but we soldiered on regardless. Again, we got a good view of Monterosso further up the coast

and then embarked on quite a steep descent.

If you look carefully. you can see people on that path down there. Yes, you can.

Down and down we went.

envying the people having a nice cool swim in the cove below us,

but our flagging spirits were revived with our first sighting of our destination, Vernazza.

It’s a very attractive scene. At one point, looking across, we could see that there were people on top of the watch tower.

Soon thereafter we passed the exit checkpoint for the trail

and arrived in the town

the main streets of which were rammed.

At this point, a comment by a Swedish friend of ours suddenly made sense.  When she noted we were headed here, her comment was, “Ah, yes – the touristy Cinque Terre”. The advice we’d been given about pickpockets also began to resonate, too.

At this point we gained some benefit from not having stopped at Il Gabbiano, as we had over an hour in which to take some lunch in Vernazza. Looking around, it seemed that there were precious few restaurants which could fit us in, but Jane had spotted a small, shady terrace outside a place called the Lunch Box

where there was room for us to partake of a focaccia, a glass of something cold

and a visit to the facilities (well, facility, singular), the entry to which was engagingly disguised.

As well as today’s walk, we were scheduled to visit one of the other Cinque Terre towns, Manarola, a couple of stops down the track, so we cast ourselves back into the melee

and headed for the station, where it really did make sense to take one’s backpack off to be sure it wasn’t rifled. What with a really crowded platform, delayed trains and the importance of getting on a train before they shut the doors, Tomaso managed to get us onto the wrong train and so we got an impromptu tour of La Spezia station before heading back to Manarola. Just outside its station is a very striking mosaic,

round the outside of which are painted a variety of species of fish.

The town itself was pretty

and, yes, crowded.  A theme begins to emerge, here.

Tomaso led us on a quick walk around the town, past the harbour where lads were showing off by jumping off a rock,

to a wonderful view back across the town.

From this point, looking the other way, up the coast, we could see our original departure point for the morning’s walk, Corniglia, and get a further sense of the walk up from the station to the town,

enjoying the schadenfreude of seeing lots of others toiling up the steps where this morning we had suffered. Finally, we walked past a status of Our Lady Of The Grapes

and, stopping only for a Basil Gelato, caught the train back to Bonassola. We were pretty tired when we got back to the hotel, so a rest and a mug of Twinings finest Earl Grey were very welcome.

So, Rule 1 of the Cinque Terre held fast – the walk might have been only 5.5km, but it was hot and hard work; and during the day we were introduced to Rule 2: it’s crowded.

At the pre-prandial drinks briefing, we were offered a choice for the next day’s hiking – a long walk between Vernazza and Monterosso or a short one (Rule 1 told us that neither would in any sense be easy). It will not be difficult for you to guess which one we opted for, but you’ll have to read the next post to confirm your theory. See you there!

 

 

*  Look, I know that today’s date is 22nd June, a full week later than the walk described above. I apologise for the lacuna, but the days between then and now have been so full-on that I haven’t had time or energy to do my usual daily write-ups. I hope that your being able to chuckle at our discomfort at slogging up and down steep hills in indescribable heat makes up for my dilatoriness.

 

Day 1 – Monterosso to Bonassola – A baptism of fire

2 Replies

Sunday 14 June 2026 – I suppose Jane and I thought that we were well ‘ard, as we had elected to go on the harder longer walk, despite the warnings from Accuweather that the expected temperature of 25°C would “feel like” 30°C. We had a leisurely start at 0945, and we used the time beforehand to wander into the village to buy fodder for a packed lunch. I was hoping to get a cheese and ham focaccia, similar to the delicious one I’d had at the Caffé delle Rose the previous day; and Trevor had pointed out a couple of recommended focacciarie for us to try out. However, the process wasn’t as straightforward as I thought it would be (well, it’s Italy, after all). We walked into the first one and looked at the array of various slabs of focaccia laid out and weren’t quite sure how the system worked. So we went in to the second one, and it was exactly equally not obvious as to whether a ham and cheese focaccia might be available. Of course, being British, we couldn’t actually ask, so we simply looked for something that might be vaguely tasty (which meant all of the varieties on offer, let’s be honest) and pointed at it. Thus we walked out with an olive focaccia for me and a tomato and anchovy number for Jane. Not what I’d had in mind, but likely to be decent sustenance if it could withstand being jolted up a hillside.

Our lead guide, Rebecca, gave the whole group a briefing before we set out and the two groups, five punters in one, two in the other, split to their various walks.

(The chap in the white stetson lookalike, by the way, is Trevor, the tour manager.)

In any case, both routes started the same way, with a walk that went as far as Bonassola Station, just five minutes away.  Our group, led by Tomaso (in the blue and white check shirt above) took the train to the next town, Levanto, and changed to the grandly-named Cinque Terre Express in order to go one more stop, to Monterosso. This is the most northerly of the five Cinque Terre villages, and the plan was for us to walk thence back to Bonassola. Here’s a map of the area, thoughtfully provided by HF Holidays, which gives an overview of the essential geography.

The five Cinque Terre villages run from Monterosso to Riomaggiore

Monterosso is split between an old town and a newer part. We would see the old town later in the week, but we started off by walking along the front of the new town.

As you can see, the companies that make beach umbrellas have rich pickings in these parts. One wonders what the procurement process is like and whether there’s cutthroat competition between rival makers of umbrella cloth.  The serried ranks of identical umbrellas indicate private beaches, at which one has to pay for one’s shelter. The less structured umbrellas indicate a public beach area, where access is free of charge. Unsurprisingly, this was somewhat better patronised.

On the right hand picture above, the headland is the barrier between Monterosso and Levanto, over which our route would take us, so we headed off in that direction. En route, looking back, we could just catch a glimpse of one of the other Cinque Terre villages along the coast – Vernazza. More of that later.

We stopped to admire a feature of a villa that had quite cunningly been built into the hillside;

a giant statue.

We had originally thought that he was Hercules, but apparently he’s supposed to be Neptune. Interestingly, he is cast in concrete, rather than chipped out of stone. He looks angry, but actually he is absolutely armless.

Having passed Neptune, our path started on the uphill track that, sighing, we realised we’d have to deal with. As ever with the hard work, there are some decent views to be noted. And used for a rest stop to gather breath, of course.

Eventually, we arrived, panting somewhat, at a spot with a splendid view of Monterosso al Mare,

and, looking further along the coast, one could see the outcrops of other Cinque Terre villages.

Vernazza in the distance

Corniglia on the cliff top, Manarola and Riomaggiore beyond it

On one of our (frequent) pauses to draw breath, Tomaso drew our attention to the signposts that marked the route.

The figures shown are not (as I’d hoped) distances in kilometres but actually time (in hours) to the various destinations. Our first destination, then, was Levanto, allegedly one and a half hours away. What could possibly go wrong?

At first, not so much. We had a decent path, with small steps in it,

but these gave way to steeper sections with less regular steps

and it was a relentless, hot, sweaty and uncomfortable climb for some of us. Soon after the signpost shown above, we reached another.

If you check back, you’ll see that even after all that bloody sweating we had seemingly made no progress from Monterosso and yet Levanto was further away. Without wishing to attribute stereotypes to any nationality (perish the thought that a British person would do such a thing), this did seem a very Italian approach to distance estimation.

This morning brought home, in the most dramatic way, the first lesson of walking in the Cinque Terre.

It’s sodding hard work.

Further, if it’s warm, it’s hot, sodding hard work. Jane and I walked the Camino Frances, which was long and a bit tough in places. Then we walked the Via Francigena, which we found really quite hard work, particularly across Tuscany. This was another level; steep, sometimes actual steps, some of which were quite substantial, and sometimes just bloody tricky to get across.

But did we complain? Well, yes, actually, we did. There was quite a lot of swearing going on among the less fit among us and only some of it was under people’s breath. Yes, that included me. A couple of our group, Tracy and Douglas, were perfectly fit and springing along; the other three of us were, frankly, suffering. But we toiled on, and eventually got to what was pretty near the high point (geographically, rather than emotionally speaking) of the trail, where there were the ruins of a hermitage, San Antonio del Mesco,

which we thought would be a great spot to stop for a bite of lunch. Sadly, a bunch of others had had the same thought

but we managed to find a spot in the shade where we could sit, take a drink and a snack, and rest a while.

The trail after that was a bit up and down but, tricky parts aside, was more or less flat, which was a pleasant change from the relentless uphill,

and after a few moments we reached another place to stop and rest a bit more,

an Italian National Trust place called Podere Lovada, or Lovada Estate. Tomaso had mentioned that it might be possible to get a lemonade or some such, on surrendering a few Euro, so I was expecting some kind of rustic farm. It was much more formal than that – basically a National Trust Gift Shop, with its own produce and other souvenir items. And beer!

It also had a delightful place out the back

where we could sit and finish off our packed lunches.

That was a wonderful break, but all good things must come to an end, and so we eventually moved on into the hot end of the day – and the downhill end, too. There were a lot of steps to get down, once again, some of which were not inconsiderable in size. It was quite tough work, but I was pleased that my knees supported me OK – not without complaint, you understand, but also without actually giving way underneath me. Part of the route led through Holm Oak (or Holly Oak) woods

which provided some welcome shade as we toiled downhill. Before too long, we got our first sight of our first target – the town of Levanto.

As we approached it, we passed a quite remarkable house, whose architect might well have been taking some ideas from Gaudi. The first hint we saw of the property was a figure in the garden.

There were other idiosyncrasies: a fountain decoration;

a lamppost decoration;

a wall decoration;

and some very unusual architectural touches.

All in all, it was quite a mad place

and absolutely wonderful to see. It is clearly possible to rent it, as we had a chat with a lady in the grounds, who said that it was her last day there before she had to move on, so she was making the most of the surroundings.

Then, thankfully, we reached the outskirts of Levanto, marked by a  castle

and a church tower.

We went into the town past the church of St. Andrea, which is very much in what’s become known as the Florentine style – alternating green and white, which may be Carrara marble and Serpentine stone, or may just be a paint job.

In the case of this church, the façade is genuine but the tower is painted. Interestingly, the rose window has 14 segments, which is not the usual number.

We carried on into the town, past buildings which featured the local marble in their construction.

Tomaso explained (if I understood correctly) that this was local stone which, though it wasn’t the calcium carbonate that gives rise to true marble, it was a hard stone which it was possible to polish to a lovely shine, and hence was called marble anyway. One place was neatly named

but we didn’t stop there; we pressed on towards the centre of the town, where we stopped for a (very, very welcome) glass of something cold.

By this stage it was getting quite late in the afternoon, and we still had to get back to Bonassola in time for the all-important 6.30 gin and tonic briefing about the next day.  It would have been theoretically possible to walk over the headland to get back to the hotel – Tomaso estimated it as being about two-thirds the effort of what we’d already done. Fortunately, there was an alternative, which was a completely flat track through a tunnel. Even the fit guys thought that this was the preferable option, so, refreshed, we set off towards it

and had our last look back to Levanto

before disappearing into the tunnel.

As you can see, it’s a well-maintained, delightfully level surface, suitable for walking and cycling between the towns. It was originally the tunnel for the railway that had been built in Victorian times, and some sections of it were quite long,

but it enabled us to get back to the hotel with (just) enough time to get out of our sweaty gear, hose ourselves down and present ourselves for the replacement of essential fluids and the briefing about the next day’s expeditions. That over, we went once again to Si Và for dinner, after which we met our Italian/Arctic friends Agnese and Karlo for a very agreeable catch up over G&Ts in a local bar. It was lovely to hear about their escapades, which included camping out on a volcano in Guatemala and other madcap episodes. It was a latish night after a full day* and we were glad to get to bed to try to recharge for the next day’s exertions.

HF Holidays always make sure that there are two options for walking (as well, I suppose, as the third, which is to do bugger all), and Rebecca and Tomaso explained each of the options so that we could make the decision as to whether to go long or short – hard or easy.

Guess which one we went for? Even better, come back tomorrow** and find out.

 

*  It might have been only 13km, but the total ascent was over 500m; the first 300m ascent was achieved over just 1.8km, which represents an average gradient of 1 in 6. So there!

**  Erm…it might not actually be tomorrow, you understand. This week has been so full on that I haven’t been able to keep up with posting each day on the events of the day. I apologise for that, and will try to get updates to these pages as soon as I can after each expedition.

 

 

 

 

 

Getting there

4 Replies

Saturday 13 June 2026 – In the opening salvo for our Istanbul trip, I inveighed at some length about the horrors of an 0230 alarm call and how I never wanted to suffer another one.

Well….

Our alarm was set for 0330 in order to get us to Heathrow for our 0700 flight to Pisa.  Our taxi was due at 0430; 0431 came and went, and we were, of course, immediately worried that Someone Had Blundered and that we would have a frantic dash to an overpriced airport car park. But the taxi turned up only about five minutes late, and he still managed to get us to Heathrow before 0500, mainly by displaying a fine contempt for speed limits.

Terminal 5 was busy – largely because we were there a few minutes before the bag drop actually opened… 

Despite being lumped in with hoi polloi at the back of the aeroplane, I thought my hard-foughtpaid-for Bronze membership of the BA Club would get us through the bag drop process (once it opened) quickly, only to discover, as we jumped from queue to queue in a vain attempt to find one which actually moved, that the cattle class bag drop was entirely deserted. So we waved goodbye to our bags there and headed for security.

My backpack was laden with cameras, power banks, backup drives, cables, adapters and other technical paraphernalia, and so I tend to expect that mine is the one that will attract attention as it passes through the scanners. It was actually Jane’s backpack that got picked on this time, because of the suspicious, nay subversive, items therein – spare (plastic) ferrules for our walking poles. That little setback aside, we were on our way with 90 minutes to spare before our departure, so a stop for coffee seemed a good idea.  I peered over the edge into the mosh pit of Terminal 5’s departure lounge

and it suddenly seemed a good idea to find a sit-down restaurant for our coffee. We took our seats in the Giraffe “Feel Good Food” restaurant and donned our cloak of invisibility for the obligatory 10 minutes until someone decided that our custom might be worthwhile, and ordered coffee-and-Danish, seated in front of a screen telling us that information on our departure gate would be vouchsafed to us in 40 minutes or so.  In the meantime, Google (via our boarding passes in our Google Wallets) had told us not only what our gate number was but also promised that the flight would be on time. It’s a fine philosophical point this – is this prescience on Google’s part an impressive victory for the power of technology harnessed for the good of humanity? Or is it just a tiny but creepy? Just like the fact that, towards the expiry of a bank card, it knows the details of my new one apparently before my bank does and certainly before my bank tells me. I mean, I’m only the customer here. (Of course, since I don’t pay for my banking and therefore the service is free, it means I’m the product, not the customer.)

Anyhoo…coffee and Danish consumed, we went to our gate. While we awaited our summons for the flight, a chap in a green HF Holidays shirt and sporting a name badge came over and asked us if by any chance we were with the HF Holidays group. Something about us (maybe the Merrell footwear or the Craghopper trousers) had clearly marked us out in Trevor’s eyes as being candidates for his group of Cinque Terre visitors. And so it was that we met a significant fraction of the (delightfully) small group with whom we’d be spending the next few days. The group is just eight people, plus the very genial Trevor, who, having introduced us all round, pottered off in search of the remaining group members. This was our first introduction to the HF Holidays universe – many of the group had been on multiple HF Holiday gatherings, which boded well for the rest of our week.

While all this was going on, BA personnel were prowling the area looking for people with large bags so that they could sorrowfully tell them that because the flight was full, the bags would have to be checked in to the hold. In the event, there were empty seats on the plane (some of them, delightfully, beside me) and so I wondered why they were being so pre-emptive. Anyway, the flight pushed back early and arrived even earlier, which is not quite the good news that it might be, as it meant that Pisa Airport weren’t ready for us with sufficient buses. But after only ten minutes or so of standing in bright sunshine and 25°C temperatures while dressed in our 4.30am trousers and fleeces, a bus arrived to take us to the entry point to the terminal.

I say “entry point to the terminal” with a slightly hollow laugh. Under a canopy obviously specially erected for just this circumstance, this is what we were faced with,

courtesy of the brain-damaged decision by 51.89% of the Great British Voting Public to leave the EU. For some moments, we inched forward as people at the front of the queue painstakingly had their fingerprints and mugshots taken, before the Italian authorities decided “bugger it” and reverted to the previous arrangement. So we shot forward into a delightfully cool terminal, past the now-redundant machines

(in their defence there four more on the other side of this partition)  to

more queues. The irony of the poster beside this second set of queues was not lost on me.

The process of getting through immigration took about an hour, but it did mean that our bags were waiting for us as we clustered around Trevor in the baggage hall; he then led us off to meet our bus driver who was called, I think Jeremiah. He was in charge of a vehicle which had enough seats to accommodate us, almost enough luggage space in its boot to hold all our bags and absolutely no bloody legroom for anyone taller than 5′ 6″. It also had a suspension system designed to cope with much more weight than it was laden with today – it was a bumpy, uncomfortable ride for 90 minutes as we headed to Bonassola, which was to be our base for the week.  Trevor tried to distract us by pointing out Things Of Interest as we went; we caught sight of the roof of the baptistry building on the site of the famous Leaning Tower, for example. However, since we’d spent considerable time at the site only a year ago, not getting a better view wasn’t an issue.

Eventually we left the high-speed but bumpy motorway for the low-speed and twisty roads that led to Bonassola. Every so often, we could get a glimpse of the very attractive-looking coastline, and then we got our first sights of Bonassola itself.

Before long we had reached the limit of where the bus could take us – the pedestrian area of the town

which is very clearly a seaside resorty sort of place.

Waiting for us there was Rebecca, Trevor’s accomplice from HF holidays, who pointed us towards our hotel, the Hotel delle Rose, 

a short suitcase trundle away where we were welcomed with smiles and great efficiency, so that we were in our room within minutes and the aircon switched on. 

One of the attractive aspects of this walking holiday is that it’s not a place-to-place-to-place affair like a Via Francigena or Camino; we’re here for the week, so could completely unpack and make ourselves at home. So we did that, and then went out to get something to eat, it being by now quite a long time since the 0730 BA flapjack had hit our digestive systems. Fortunately, hard next door to Hotel delle Rose is Caffè delle Rose,

which apart from being a gelateria artigiana, does a mean focaccia panini and salata vegeteriana. And beer. So we availed ourselves of those and were joined by Jenny, one of our group, giving us the chance to get to know her a little better.

After lunch, we rested for a little while at the hotel before joining a short walk round Bonassola,

to enable Trevor to show us where the important things were in the town, particularly places where we could buy packed lunches, since (sigh) we might be short of coffee bars to rest at over the course of the next week.

The tour was, of necessity, quite short, because Bonassola is not a big place. Along one side of the main street is an embankment which was originally the support for a railway built in Victorian times

and which provided both a bulwark against the worst of the sea weather when it was bad and allowed tunnels through so that people could get access to the beaches.

It’s a charming place, particularly in the sunshine, which we’re due to see a lot of during the week we’re here. As I write this, I’m glad to see the lovely weather. Come back and talk to me as I’m toiling up the steep valley sides in 30°C heat later on in the week and I might have a different attitude, but for now it seemed like a nice-a place. There were some lovely décor touches as we walked around.

In the main supermarket in the town we had another striking “small world” encounter. The keen of memory among you will remember that we were in this neck of the woods (but somewhat south of here) a year ago when we walked the Via Francigena. In a place called San Quirico, we bumped into a Dutch lass who we’d first met the year before in the Antarctic on M/V Hondius. Today, as we queued up with our bananas, the lass in front of us was none other than Agnese, an Italian girl who we’d first met on M/V Kinfish at the other end of the earth, in the Arctic. She it was, along with Karlo, her chap, who participated, along with other people of questionable sanity, in the Polar Plunge as we navigated alongside the glacial coast of Bråsvellbreen, and now there she was in the same Italian shop as us; she and Karlo had come to visit her mum, who has a place in Bonassola. The first coincidence was pretty unusual; the second was, frankly, astonishing.

We were a bit short of Euro cash, and needed to find an ATM. The one that Trevor knew about was no longer active, but back at the hotel, Rebecca pointed us at the Post Office. To find it, she said, we had to walk past “the old men”. It was quite clear what she meant;

a sight quite common in Southern Europe – the menfolk of the town sitting round in the shade and shooting the breeze, presumably to the great relief of their spouses, who will be glad they’re out of the house.

Back at the hotel, we had a welcome briefing on the hotel’s rooftop terrace over a glass of (a very decent) Prosecco,

during which we started the process of getting to know each other better, and, importantly,  found out what awaited us the following day (a choice between a shorter or longer walk, which they accidentally kept calling the easier or harder walk). And then we finished off the day with dinner at a local restaurant, Si Và, just round the corner. This was to be our regular dinner restaurant, as the hotel kitchen, alas, was not operational because the chef had retired and, as yet, no replacement had been found for him.

The food was very good, but the restaurant suffered from the serious flaw which afflicts so many Italian restaurants in Italy – such is the expectation that diners want wine that they don’t have any gin.  Sigh….well, a Campari spritz will have to do. We followed dinner with a final cuppa back on the hotel terrace.

Thus ended our journey to the outskirts of the Cinque Terre. Tomorrow we get the chance to explore at least one of the villages and work out for ourselves exactly how hard the walking is going to be (by all accounts, quite hard, incidentally). Stay tuned to see how much we suffer, why don’t you?