We Walk from Monte Rosso to Levanto

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The day looked fine after the threatening weather the night before so we decided to do our first big walk from Monte Rosso to Levanto, which is a town just to the north west of Cinque Terre. We knew where to start from our recce of the previous day and the trail was quite easy to follow – it went up, up and up. We took our time and talked to various people on the trail in English French or German as required. The standard greeting was Italian. A lot of the trail was through the typical forest of evergreen oak but we had some fine views as well. Near the top is an old hermitage with some ruins which we walked around. We had taken some lunch with us which fortified us for the long walk down to Levanto. The total distance was only a bit over 7 k but it felt like more, however we were very pleased to have achieved this walk.





Levanto was quite difficult to find one’s way around but we managed to get a map from a friendly hotelier, and after a restorative gelato (Dave) and coffee (Tamara) we made our way up to the train station, crossing over a totally dry river on the way. We didn’t have to wait long for a train that stopped at the Cinque Terre stations.



That evening we decided to try one of the restaurants in the main part of Rio Maggiore. To get to this we have to walk about 120 metres through a tunnel. The restaurant was fairly full so we got to sit in an underground room with a nautical theme, next to a French couple. We had a good minestrone and shared a pasta with tuna which really was tuna fillet, not the stuff out of a tin, and had the house red, having been converted to the local reds which we much preferred to chianti. We slept pretty well after that.

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