Genoa 2009

During April 2009, I visited Cinque Terre and Genoa which are in North West Italy.

It'll probably be best to read the rest of this page before clicking on the following links to find my diary and photos for each day.

The Cinque Terre consists of five seaside villages which from North to South are Monterosso, Verraza, Corniglia, Manafola and Riomaggiore. Further North there is a town called Levanto and further South there is Porto Venere.

There are two main walking routes in the Cinque Terre. Route 2 (also known as the Blue Route) is a coastal path from Monterosso to Riomaggiore. It is heavily used by tourists and so it is often very crowded with queues of people. I avoided it whilst I was there. Route 2 is said to be 9K long and it is suggested that it'll take 5 hours to walk.

Although route 2 involves a lot of climbing, there is another route called route 1 which is an inland route and is at a higher altitude. It runs from Levanto to Porte Venere but, because it is inland, it avoids the five seaside villages in between. Route 1 is said to be 24.6K long and it is suggested that it'll take 12 hours to walk.

However, you do not have to do route 1 in one go as there are many footpaths from the five villages that climb up to route 1.

To help you get around, there is a railway line with stations that connects these seven places, and one version of the Cinque Terre card (which you need to walk route 2) also includes free travel on the railway line.

My holiday in Cinque Terre was organised by Sherpa Holidays: they arranged my hotel in Monterosso and provided lots of maps and notes for seven walks.

The maps Sherpa Holidays provided were good. Several of the maps seemed to be a better coloured version of the 1:25000 map that I used throughout the holiday. This is map 506 from Edizioni Multigraphic entitled "Cinque Terre" (ISBN 8874650248). I also used the map that comes with the Cinque Terre card as that provides a useful overview of all the footpaths.

Although the notes they provided were helpful for three of the walks I did, fairly early on I decided I wanted to do all of route 1 but to do it in stages across five days.

So on each day I would leave route 1 at some appropriate point and then use one of the intermediate footpaths to climb down to one of the seaside villages and then get the train back to the hotel. On then the following day, I would retrace this, taking the train to the station; climbing up the intermediate path to the point where I left route 1 the previous day.

One reasonably obvious way in which to do this is:
Section 1: Levanto 1 Punta Mesco 1 Soviore 9 Monterosso
Section 2: Monterosso 9 Soviore 1 Foce di Drignana 8 Vernazza
Section 3: Vernazza 8 Foce di Drignana 1 La Cigoletta 7 Vernazza
Section 4: Vernazza 7 La Cigoletta 1 Sella La Croce 01 Riomaggiore
Section 5: Riomaggiore 01 Sella La Croce 1 Porto Venere
(where the numbers are the numbers of the footpaths).

Because I had not thought this out well in advance, I messed up day 1 by doing:
Day 1: Monterosso 10 Punta Mesco 1 Soviore 9 Monterosso
This was partly because Sherpa Holidays had provided some notes for this route. In the end, I did the missing section, the section from Levanto to Punta Mesco on a later day.

I decided that some of the route finding on the intermediate paths might be difficult and so, because my notes from Sherpa Holidays also had a description of Section 3, I decided to do Section 3 before Section 2. By doing the sections in this order, I will already have done the routes required for Section 2 and would more easily be able to navigate them.

So in the end I did:
Day 1: Monterosso 10 Punta Mesco 1 Soviore 9 Monterosso (477m)
Day 2: Vernazza 8 Foce di Drignana 1 La Cigoletta 7 Vernazza (750m)
Day 3: Monterosso 9 Soviore 1 Foce di Drignana 8 Vernazza (560m)
Day 3: Levanto 1 Punta Mesco 10 Monterosso (325m)
Day 4: Vernazza 7 La Cigoletta 1 Sella La Croce 01 Riomaggiore (750m)
Day 5: Riomaggiore 01 Sella La Croce 1 Porto Venere (639m)
Note that two routes were done on Day 3.

The figures at the end of each line give the highest point reached that day. Remember that each day's walking starts and finishes at sea level. Yes, there was a lot of climbing: I'm not sure whether the climbing up was worse than the climbing down! Probably, the section of route 7 close to Vernazza was the worst bit of path for climbing and route 1 close to Porto Venere was the scariest bit as far as my vertigo was concerned.

My week in Cinque Terre was followed by three days in Genoa. The main purpose of my visit was to do a 11.5K road race.

Click on the following links to find my diary and photos for each day.

Barry Cornelius
May 2009