Thursday March 29th

Today we galvanised ourselves into action. We caught the train from Levanto to Riomaggiore, the furthest of the Cinque Terra’s five villages, with the intention of walking back towards Levanto. It’s too far to cover all in one go, but each of the villages has a station and you just jump on the train when you’ve had enough.
The photo shows the start of this spectacular coastal path: on the right in the photo you can see the path railings. We’re heading for village no.2, Manarola.

The villages were built wherever they could be fitted in, on rocky outcrops and in steep valleys. The result is very picturesque, as in the example of Manarola below with its multi-coloured houses and small harbour. Tarmac roads only came in the 1990’s.

Before the roads and the tourists, the area supported itself by fishing and vineyards. Wine is still an important product and the vines are immaculately tended on incredibly steep terraces. See photo underneath. Vegetables for local consumption are also grown in the same way. Hard though the work was, and still is, we saw some really ancient villagers on these plots so perhaps the exercise, fresh air and lack of modern stress gets them to a ripe old age.

Moving on from Manarola, another lovely headland beckons, behind which lies village no.3.

But round the next corner, we come to a barrier that states that the onward path is unsafe and therefore closed. So, without a convenient train due to hop around this obstacle, we decide to retrace our steps to our starting point, Riomaggiore. But all is not lost as we now walked around the village, not having done so earlier in our eagerness to get started on the walk. The next photo typifies so many places in Italy.