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.