Friday 19 June 2026 – At yesterday’s briefing, we had been, as usual, presented with a choice between two walks. The main difference would be pace, with a well ‘ard group simply walking a little faster and doing a couple of extra kilometres before being set free to get some refreshment. I actually put my name down for that, because it didn’t seem, on the basis of the information to hand, to be too arduous, just slightly longer. However, on the day, given that the forecast was for temperatures in the 30s (yes! almost as hot as the UK where I write this one week later!) I chickened out and joined the shorter walk. Which turned out not to be shorter at all. Or even much slower. But it was still chickening out.

Anyhoo, for both groups the end point would be the same: the jewel of the Italian Riviera – Portofino.

Our start point was a place called Camogli, which would be a boarding point for a boat ride and which Tomaso said was-a nice-a place, so I expected another charming fishing village. Wrongly, as it turned out. Camogli is 38km as the crow flies from Bonassola, but as the bus drives it’s over double that distance and takes an hour and a half. The bus we were in was the same (horrible, noisy, cramped, uncomfortable) bus that had brought us in from the airport the previous weekend. And it dropped us in the middle, it seemed, of a city. Which is fair enough, what with Camogli being a city an’ all, just not what I’d expected. It didn’t seem like-a nice-a place at all, particularly since the bus had to drop us off some distance from where we had to board the boat. There seemed to be other tourist groups as well, as we trooped off to find our quay.

We passed a point where we could look further along the coast, and could actually make out the city of Genoa in the distance.

Then abruptly we turned right down some steps, and we could see why Tomaso liked the town.

There were lots of steps down through some typically Italian narrow streets, and some very fine trompe l’oeil on the buildings.

The harbour itself is very attractive,

and the structure of the town is unusual, as can be seen from a map.

You can see that  there is a peninsula jutting out from the mainland; originally this was an island (hence being called L’isola) reached by a bridge, and this was the original old town. We went for a look round, but only after having bought our lunch, at a focaccieria specifically recommended by Tomaso.

The main component of l’isola is a church, the Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta.

To get to it requires climbing steps which then gives one a decent view back over the harbour,

and, looking the other way, the town beach.

Outside the church is a lovely tiled description of L’isola

above a patterned courtyard.

The church itself is, once again, sumptuously appointed, with some gorgeous painted illustrations and decoration

and some colourful stained glass.

We had a few moments before our boat departed, so I wandered round taking some more photos of the harbour.

The rather colourful boat shown above is “U Dragun“, a symbol of Camogli, a hybrid sail- and rowing boat, known for its traditional design and used in historic re-enactments and festivals.

As we boarded our boat, we noted that someone, sadly, had lost their hat,

but there were lots of places that would have sold a replacement, so probably not a tragedy. Soon, we were off and could see the slightly surreal frontage of the city – all those uniform buildings with their uniform dark windows staring at the world.  Attractive, but slightly unsettling at the same time.

It was a short trip, just round the headland to a place called San Fruttuoso. The reason we were going by boat is that it can only be accessed on foot or by sea. It’s well-known for its abbey,

a Benedictine monastery dating back to the year 1000. It’s also a miniature beach resort, of course,

and, unusually, something of a centre for scuba diving. In the abbey is a statue called “Christ of the Abyss”.

which is a replica of a statue which has been placed in the waters of the bay in memory of Dario Gonzatti, the first Italian to use scuba gear in his dives, who tragically died near this spot in 1947. It’s at a depth of about 17 metres, and is garlanded with flowers every July by scuba divers in memoriam.

We had to walk around the back of the abbey to get to the start of our trail, and this gave us some more views of the village.

We passed an old lavatoio,

which would once have been where the public could wash their clothes, and walked between a restaurant and its terrace,

which looked like a wonderful place to have said “sod it, it’s too hot, let’s have lunch”, but we pressed on. The sea was a wonderful colour. It would have been a lovely lunchtime view on that terrace. Sigh.

It almost immediately became obvious that my hopes for a gentle uphill gradient for our walk were completely misplaced.

Bugger. That lunch-on-the-terrace idea was an increasingly attractive proposition at this point. But we soldiered on. To give you some idea of the climb, here’s a view of a Saracen watchtower taken early on.

And here’s the view of the same watchtower taken some 37 minutes later.

Between these two shots, this is the terrain we had to deal with.

We got a final view of San Fruttuoso

before – finally! – making it to our lunch spot,

where, amusingly, the well ‘ard set were still having lunch. We shooed them off so we could have ours, and then pressed on. The views continued to be lovely

but the trend, annoyingly, continued to be upwards,

albeit past some lovely views.

The path levelled out a fraction and we came across, of all things, a lamppost! With a light bulb still in it!

Then there were more, and it became clear that we’d reached an outpost of civilisation, a small hamlet called Prato, where there was a water point.

Rebecca invited us to refill our water bottles, but we didn’t, because we still had plenty left. The general manic focus on water and hydration was a bit puzzling to Jane and me. We were enjoined to take litres and litres of the stuff with us, and each of us had a couple of water bottles in our backpacks; hers were 800ml and mine were 500. In all the walking in all the heat, we never needed to broach mine – I simply carried the same water up and down all the hills we’d covered. And yet we didn’t go thirsty at any point. Sure, the beers at the end of the walks were very welcome, but I found the dichotomy of what we were told we needed and what we actually drank a bit of a mystery.

Anyhow, the route to Portofino was all downhill from here, which at first seemed like a good idea,

leading us past a fantastic view of the town of Portofino,

but the path soon degenerated into steps.

Lots of the fuckers.

I had been perfectly all right going down steep slopes for the past few days, but for my right knee, these steps were the last straw. By the time I walked into Portofino, it was clear that All Was Not Well. I wasn’t crippled; walking straight and level was OK, but anything other needed care, concentration and, preferably a handrail. Didn’t stop me from joining the others at the Dolce & Gabbana bar for a glass (or, in my case, two) of something cold, though. We were joined there by the well ‘ard set, who were supposed to have done extra kilometrage out to the Portofino lighthouse and back, but it was too hot, poor dears.  Actually, in their defence, I think they took a longer route from the top down to Portofino which involved a more gentle descent – longer and hotter, maybe, but their knees were still working when they got down.

I was expecting Portofino to be (a) larger and (b) more impressive than it actually is. It’s by no means unattractive

but nothing outstandingly different from the sort of places we’d seen over the last days. It is, though, at the heart of the Italian Riviera and has a reputation of being very up-market. Well, anywhere that’s got a Dolce & Gabbana shop that doubles as a bar is likely to be on the posh side. So I was not particularly surprised to see the bar bill.

I had the gin and “Portofinese Gold” (perfectly nice beer in a very fancy bottle), and Jane had the spremuta – freshly squeezed OJ. Naif that I am, I don’t think I’ve ever paid over £20 for a G&T before. I’m not complaining, by the way – I knew it was going to be expensive. But I thought the prices worth commenting on, you understand. Actually the chap at the till was all over the place and initially wanted to charge me €90, but I’d only had a couple of drinks, so I was wise to his game.

We had to make a reasonably swift departure to catch the boat for a further short cruise round the Portofino headland. Out we went,

past the Splendido Hotel, which is a Belmond gaff, and thus thoroughly in line with the up-market values espoused by the Portofino set,

and the Portofino lighthouse that the well ‘ard set had so signally failed to get to.

The destination for our short ferry ride was the next town along the headland, Santa Margherita Ligure. It has the same slightly unsettling uniformity of architecture in the houses along the sea front, so it’s obviously A Thing in these parts.

It’s a very fine town,

with the usual crop of top-notch trompe l’oeil décor

but we had no time to stop and stare, as our bus was waiting for us so we could bump and grind our way back to Bonassola in time for a slightly delayed evening briefing and drinkies before dinner. Today was our last walk, and we had to return home on the morrow, so the briefing was kind of important in order that we understood the timings for the day. My knee being in the state it was, I was rather grateful that the hotel had a lift to get me to the fourth floor terrace for that…

Our official flight time home the next seemed quite reasonable, but because of the potential for cock-ups courtesy of the EES, we had to make an early start. The day turned out not to be entirely uneventful and I will detail it in the next post, which will be the valedictory entry for what has been an excellent, if quite sweaty, week.