I’m sitting in a laundrette in La Spezia right now, so I may as well write this. This morning Guiseppena served me a traditional Italian breakfast of fruit, prosciutto, cheese, bread, croissant with cherry jam, juice and coffee. It was a work of art, but I could not get through it all.
She called Roberto, who came round and helped me to lug my stuff around the corner to his place. They both warned me to be careful in Naples, Calabria and Sicily. Hmmm
Then off to the railway station to buy my Cinque Terre Pass, which buys you unlimited train access between La Spezia and the 5 villages, and also the use of the trails.
The train delivers you to the first village, Riomaggiore, very quickly, but I wanted the third, Corniglia because the trail between Riomaggiore and Manarola was closed by a landslide, as was the trail between Manarola and Corniglia. My plan was to walk from Corniglia to Vernazza, then Monterosso, and back. These two legs are the hardest because you climb so high and descend again.
Corniglia is unique amongst the five villages in that it requires you to climb a few hundred steps to get from the station to Corniglia Centro. The others are at the level of the rail station.
I had had no exercise since leaving Australia a week ago, and no real walking since last summer. I wanted to get hot and sweaty and wear myself out. In Corniglia there are two ATMs, no problem finding cash here, and a couple of tourist bars etc, but it was fairly quiet.
The trail was spectacular, seemed to climb forever, quite rocky. High above the sea and very narrow in many places, where somebody needed to squeeze against a railing or rock wall to allow free passage to someone, or sometimes seemingly a whole busful of people going the other way.
I succeeded quite well in my aim of wearing myself out, by the time I reached Vernazza the first time, with 75% of my planned walking remaining. Ostensibly the cutest of the 5 villages, Vernazza turned out to be crowded with tourists and no place I wanted to be.
Corniglia was indeed special, since everybody there was willing to climb those steps, not just step out of a train. In Vernazza, one rotund American woman to another, probably her daughter, contemplating a climb of perhaps 30 steps, said “You can do this, don’t give up”.
I could not find the way out of Vernazza toward Monterosso. I went to the far end of the village where the church is, at where Google Maps seemed to indicate it started, but no exit was obvious. I went back, thinking perhaps the trail from Corniglia just kept going. No. I climbed a good way up another trail, before I decided the Google maps blue dot showed I was on the wrong trail. I asked a few people, but nobody seemed to know. After the 5th transit of the village I decided to let Google maps direct me. Walk southwest, it said. Into the sea? I went through the church and from the outside could actually see people above, on the trail, but how to get up there? I had been trying to escape from Vernazza for an hour now. Finally I saw a couple with backpacks emerge from a narrow doorway in the far corner of the piazza. They had come from Monterosso! A narrow stairway led up to what became the trail.
This part is meant to be the toughest of the 4 sections connecting the 5 villages, but it was no harder than the section I had recently covered.
About an hour later I was eating gelati in Monterosso. Everyone else on the trail seemed reasonably cool and comfortable. One porcelain complexioned Japanese girl I passed held a parasol for the whole distance. I forgot to mention that the weather was sunny and clear, more than 30 degrees. There were Italians, German, French, Americans, a few Japanese. I’m multilingual, I could say good morning, and thanks in all 5 languages. I arrived in Monterosso sweat soaked, dusty, with blood running down my hand from a graze. It was great!
Monterosso has the two beaches, and quite a lot of bars and restaurants, but I could not find anywhere to sit down. Eventually I found a place on the foreshore and had a couple of beers, took some photos for people, then it was time to hit the trail.
In Vernazza on the way back, I realised that the lane at the top of the aforementioned stairs from the piazza kept going south, between houses, so narrow in places you almost had to turn sideways, right through the eastern suburbs, and ended at a flight of stairs just below the rail station, with no sign. The Vernazza Bypass.
Halfway back to Corniglia is a little place with a terrace that specialises in fresh squeezed orange juice. Really, buying the juice is how you pay to sit on the terrace. I realised there that most other people were frayed at the edges too. It’s a tough walk.
I stayed there for quite a while, with Corniglia in view below. I was rapidly congealing, and finally found the will to stagger out onto the trail. Down the hundreds of steps from Corniglia, and I was in the train at about 5 pm.
No enthusiasm for seeing the last two villages, maybe next time. I needed to get my week’s washing done. It was a great day.
Dinner was pizza and beer, and a cappuccino. Back to cappuccino here in Italy, because it’s the only way to get coffee with milk in it. The alternative is a thimbleful of black tar.
I realised only later that I had spent most of the day in fairly intense sunshine, and I have no sign of sunburn. I would have cooked in Australia.
Since I have walked and run down so many stairs, using muscles that riding a bike does not exercise at all, I’ll be a cripple for the next 4 days. I may as well ride to Sicily.