Tag Archives: Tourism

Day 1 – Monterosso to Bonassola – A baptism of fire

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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

Consiglia 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

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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? 

 

 

 

 

Day 7 – The journey home and valedictory thoughts

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Thursday 14 May 2026 – Breakfast in the hotel was a chance to say cheerio to some of the group. The journey to the airport would be the opportunity to say our farewells to some of the others. All in all, the trip has been an affable social affair with like-minded souls all trying to get to grips with the complexities and subtleties of Istanbul’s chequered past.

Our transport to the airport was planned, at a relatively comfortable 9m, for three hours before our flight’s departure time, so I was expecting the traffic to be bad.  It wasn’t, but there was one unexpected phenomenon.

Seçkin had many times commented on how lucky we’d been with the weather, but I hadn’t really believed him, thinking that rain was relatively rare at this time of year. But it hurled it down with rain for much of our journey to the airport; so we had been lucky, after all.

We got to the airport with two and a half hours to go before our flight.  Another surprise awaited me. You have to go through security to get into the airport.

All bags went through the scanner and it was a more thorough security check than I’d seen anywhere else. We got to the BA check-in desk, and they told us very politely that we should come back in half an hour, as they were taking check-ins for an earlier flight.  We took this as an opportunity to get a coffee, but when we went back to the desk, this is what we found.

In a matter of moments, the queue had gone from nothing to quite a substantial thing.  Fortunately, I spotted that, being still a Bronze member of the BA Club, I was allowed a priority check-in, so that saved my blood pressure. And going through security was fairly swift, as, being a modern airport, they had the scanners that don’t require one to take out laptops and tablets.

I said that on arrival I was boggled by the size of the arrivals duty-free area; the departure lounge duty free area is an order of magnitude bigger. It’s so big that staff are on tricycles and Segways to get around. There are even electric wheelchairs to cart assistance-needing customers around the place.

But there are some elegant décor touches to leaven the relentless retail landscape.

Very nice Art Nouveau touches in the departure lounge

The signs in the departure lounge were telling us to go to our gate, so we did; there, a nearly-polite man told us to bugger off for 15 minutes as they weren’t accepting people at the gate yet. We looked around for somewhere to sit, and there were no seats in sight, but ol’ jobsworth at the gate was adamant – bugger off and come back in fifteen minutes.

So we wandered around in search of somewhere to sit, and eventually found a not particularly comfortable perch, where, directly in front of me, was this massive sign.

Not bloody yet, they don’t.

We waited the obligatory 15 minutes and, when we got back to the gate

there was, of course, a queue. We joined it and although Jane was allowed to go in and sit down, I had to go and join another queue,

for, would you believe it, a security check. This would thus be the third security check I’d been through. And it was exceedingly thorough. And slow. Not helped when someone on their electric wheelchair jumped the queue.

It’s ableist, I tell you.

So I had to wait while people in front of me basically had to entirely unpack their hand baggage so that one of the two staff there could check it over, and put detector wipes through a machine for all tech items and footwear. So I had to remove my laptop, my tablet, both cameras and my power banks whilst this chap did his checks, and then put them all back in again afterwards. I suppose it’s just a random security check and I should be grateful that they’re paying attention; but I was struck by the difference in attitude to security between here and the very peremptory observance of it in downtown Istanbul.

The flight was entirely uneventful, and I was able to get on with some photo editing for the four or so hours we spent getting back to the UK, where

the sun was shining! We deplaned and headed through the passport gates to the baggage area to our carousel.  After some moments the bags of a handful of passengers on our flight came through, but then….nothing. I’m normally quite patient when it comes to doing the baggage stare thing, but 45 minutes is asking too much of me, so I went off in search of a BA Assistance desk.  There was one not too far away, but

it was bugger-all use to me, so I kept on walking, pretty much to the other end of the baggage hall, where there was a BA desk which actually had some staff. And, of course, a queue. Jane hurried across to give me the baggage receipts so I could discuss the situation should I ever get to the head of the queue, and then, about an hour after we first got to the baggage hall, technology stirred itself from its slumbers and the BA App told me that our bags were about to be delivered – but on a different carousel. I have no idea what had been going on in the interim*, but I was glad that the systems were sufficiently joined up that I didn’t have to wait in that queue any longer.

Our taxi driver was remarkable phlegmatic about having had to wait, and took our bags to his car (a Dongfeng; I’ve never come across one of them before), and paid his ticket. When we got to the barrier, though, it stolidly failed to lift, so our guy had a chat with the chap on the other end of the help button, who sounded as if he was in a call centre in Bangalore somewhere; eventually we were allowed out of the car park and, with a single bound we were free – to join the rush hour traffic on the M25!

It was lovely to get home, make ourselves a nice cup of tea and gather our thoughts about the last week. It was an intensive schedule and there was a lot to take in. Perhaps I should have read things up more before I departed thither, or maybe the Peter Sommer schedule should have included some kind of preliminary get-together with everyone to give a basic historical briefing so people would be better able to understand the blitz of names and dates that whizzed past as we went round the city. I certainly feel that I’ve learned a huge amount about the history of the city and the Ottoman culture. One thing we didn’t get from the week was to do with the reason we came here. We’d thought that by coming to GHQ of the Orthodox Christian Church we might come to understand the flow of the Orthodox religion and related iconography that led to what we saw in Romania. We didn’t. That’s not particularly a criticism of the Peter Sommer agenda, but a reflection of the complexity of the history of Constantinople. We would have needed to visit the Patriarch’s Church in Istanbul and understood that part of its history, and that religious aspect simply wasn’t the focus area of the itinerary we were following.

So: while I enjoyed the week, learned a lot and am glad I went, I don’t feel an urgent need to go back to Istanbul. It’s a bit too hectic and crowded for my comfort. Having said that, we’re entertaining thoughts of visiting India, and I wonder what I’ll make of that?

Once again, then, these pages will go dark for a few weeks. We have a short-haul European trip with a bit of walking involved in it in about a month’s time. I hope we’ll have your company then, but for now, cheerio and take care.

 

*  PS. It seems we were lucky. The following day, 20,000 bags went missing in Heathrow Terminal 5, according to The Times, the fifth time this year that there has been a baggage issue there. One could infer that the problem was building up as we were travelling through – or that it’s a perpetual potential problem.