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Published: September 22nd 2011
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Today we took advantage of the walking tracks in the Cinque Terre. We purchased a two day pass, which allows us on and off the paths, trains and buses during the period, and heaven forbid you forget to validate the ticket before getting on the train. Several people we have met have copped the 50Euro per person fine for not validating their tickets on the trains. The conductors are brutal, and have no tolerance for tourists claiming not to know!
We trained to Riomaggiore, the first village of the Cinque Terre (Monterosso is the 5th, and walking is supposed to be easier in the direction from Riomaggiore. Easy, smeasy! Though there are some serious hikers around, and we have also seen many people (mostly ladies, I must add) in their 60’s and 70’s in their hiking gear with their walking poles! Lucky not too many of them overtook us today.
The first part of the walk is about 1 km from Riomaggiore to Manarola called the Via Del Amore (Walk of Love). It is a path along the cliff edge and an easy mostly flat walk. Similar to some bridges in Paris over the Seine, many people have put
Sunset from cruise
Monterosso Headland padlocks along the track to symbolize their eternal love. Some also etch their initials into the large agave and cactus leaves.
Manarola was a lovely little town, but the heat had set in! Hot as hot in the sun, and we thought we would take a look around the town (uphill) before going down towards the Marina (thinking the track on to the next town would be from near the marina). Realising we were at the top of the town, and the path between Manarola and Corniglia was closed due to landslide damage, we continued uphill following some other tourists, thinking we were on the detour track - meant to take 2.5 hours. Unfortunately we went astray and ended up in amoungst some per persons terrace vineyard, but we thought we could keep going and link up with the other path perhaps over the hill. Once we were actually at the point of realizing we needed to go back as we could see no way it was going to link and we didn’t have much water with us, we had probably walked about an hour (round trip back to town). By this time in the heat I was almost
desperate enough to take a dip in the Piccolo Marina (pic) in my clothing, but decided to have a quick lunch and train on to the next town and swim there.
Arriving at Corniglia station nearly at sea level was a rude awakening, as it was then 382 steps to the town (situated high on the hill and no hope for a swim here unless I wanted to go more then 382 steps down and back up again!)
Corniglia was a smaller quieter town, and in need of a little tlc. After some exploration and a gelato for the road, we headed on what read as a 1.5 hour walk, which the gelati man told me was about 20 mins up hill, then I thought he said about an hour flattish, then downhill to Vernazza. Flattish motions with Italian words mean something different obviously because we walked up hill for about 1 and a half hours! I have attached photos, but it doesn’t really show easily how high we were.
We walked about 8-9 kms we think today and got home to Monterosso about 5.45 (caught the train from Vernazza as it was a hard 2.5 hour
walk) then went for a swim at our local beach in front of the hotel to revive our senses.
My feet are back to normal but today they feel again like those first days in Paris, mostly due to rocky uneven walking paths.
Tomorrow we will head back to Vernazza to explore as we didn’t have the energy to look around, but it was a lively little town with some great souvenir shopping!
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