We woke up to yet another gorgeous day. Opened our door and picked up a few more ripe lemons to add to our collection and then went up to grab our breakfast. We elected to eat outside on one of two terraces with a view of the olive grove and the ocean. Can't decide what was best, the view or the automatic machine that made any kind of coffee drink you wanted, over and over again.
The morning view:
We made the short walk to town, stopped at a shop to get some water to fill our hydration packs and then walked to the train station to pick up our trail/train passes. There is a small fee to hike on the main trail between the towns, and for a few euros more you can get a train pass that is good for unlimited travel between all the towns of the Cinque Terre. Once we had our passes we were off.
The main trail links each of the 5 towns. Each section is a little different, and unfortunately one of the sections is closed right now (between the 3rd and 4th town) because of a landslide earlier in the year. There are a series of higher trails, and trails that link the two. A lot of people just do one or two sections at a time, going back to do another section another day. We decided that we wanted to tackle the whole trail in one go.....and we elected to go from north to south, which is the harder direction to go in.
The trail has existed for years and was once used by the locals to move supplies back and forth, as well as the tend to the crops of olives, lemons, limes and grapes that cover the hillsides. The first two sections between Monterosso and Vernazza, then Vernazza and Corneglia are said to be the hardest as you climb from sea level far up the terraced hillsides and back down again. To say that the views are spectaculcar would be the understatement of the century....here are a very few of the shots from the first part of the trail.
Looking back on the old part of Monterosso as we leave:
Jo on an easy part of the trail
Looking back to where we started from pretty high up
The view coming down into Vernazza
When we got to Vernazza we spent some time exploring, it s really neat town with ferries coming and going and people wandering around taking in all the sites. We filled up on fluids and had some grapes and hit the trail again....the thermometer was climbing, it was already 38 degrees and we were sweating buckets. The next section to Corneglia was challenging as well, but the views were equally rewarding. Here is a shot coming into Corneglia, it isn't at sea level, it sits above the water on a point of land....if you look in the background you can see Manorola.
Closer to Corneglia
Normally the walk from Corneglia to Manorola isn't that hard, but that is the section that is closed. We wanted to do the whole trail so we took a detour which took us straight up to one of the mountain towns through steeply terraced vineyards. We gained a lot of elevation in a short period of time. Here is a shot taken part way along the detour, you can see Manorola in the distance.
It seemed to take forever to make our way down to Manorola, but from there the last part of the trail is a cake walk. It's litterally a paved sidewalk linking the last two towns, but it has a name, and some tradition to it.
We made it to Riomaggiore, hot and tired. Normally the entire trail takes about 5 hours to hike. We had to do the detour which added quite a bit of distance and elevation gain, but we were pretty pleased that our total hiking time was only 4 hours...total distance of about 14 km. And we did learn one valuable lesson along the way.....in Europe they sell water with gas or without. When you put water with gas into your hydration bladder and hike up and down a mountain, it expands quite a bit....the bonus is that the water shoots out under good pressure, lol.
We hopped on the train in Riomaggiore and took the quick ride back to Monterosso and made out way back the our B & B to shower up and relax a bit. Then it was back to have another lovely dinner on the ocean. Spaghetti carobonara, veal scallopini with local lemons, insalata mista, some local wine and tiramisu to finish it off. Not a bad way to end the day, and to replenish after the hike. Then it was back to relax a bit more under our lemon tree.....ah la dolce vita!
