Leaving
San Rocco, we decided to take the autostrada to La Spezia, a journey of 58
miles, and there must have been over 20 tunnels (cut into the rock) to go through!
We
have been staying on a Sosta in La Spezia for a couple of nights (N44.10417
E9.85917), at only €6 a night for all the usual except electric, which we don't need as we have plenty of on-board gas and the bright sunshine is keeping our batteries charged via the solar panel on top of the motorhome. The Sosta is
voluntarily operated by the town’s ambulance men, who have their ambulances
parked up on one side of the barriered costa and small ticket office the
other. First appearances at the entrance
made us wonder if we wanted to stop, but once inside the little grass plots are
fine, it’s nice and quiet and has everything we need. It even has a ‘self-cleaning’ toilet!
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| Barbeque time! |
First
place to explore was Cinque Terre - a coastline that stretches between La
Spezia and the beach resort of Levanto.
It’s named after the 5 tiny villages/hamlets – Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia,
Vernazza and Monterosso – that are wedged into coves between sheer cliffs and
their remoteness makes them only accessible by foot or by train. The area is a designated UNESCO World Heritage site (since 1997) and acquired the status of National Park in 1999. It is a popular hiking route and you can buy a Cinque Terre Card to walk the ‘blue
routes’, or there are some free very steep ‘red routes’, although due to
flooding and recent landslides some of these are closed.
We
thought about taking the train from La Spezia, and getting on and off at all
the little villages but the downside is that most of the train journey goes
through tunnels cut into the rock, and therefore you don’t get to enjoy the beautiful
coastline scenery. So,
we decided to do it on the scooter – a round trip of 85 kms and really scenic
from start to finish!
Riomaggiore
is the first of the villages from La Spezia,
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| Riomaggiore |
Then around to Manarola, with
its pastel-shaded houses squeezed into the cliffs and up the side of the headland,
looking down on the pretty harbour. We had read that you need to avoid visiting
these villages during the busy months of July and August but this was the end
of May and you couldn’t move for people!
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| Manarola |
On to Corniglia, which is the smallest and remotest of the 5 villages, clinging to a high cliff 90m above
sea. The
cliffs are used to grow olives, grapes and other fruits. Across the villages a network of dry-stone walls was built by
local farmers over the centuries and zigzags up and down the terraced hillsides
for thousands of kilometres, over a distance estimated by some to exceed that
of the Great Wall of China.
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| Corniglia, seen from the tops of Manarola |
Looking
back to Manarola from Corniglia.
The fourth village, Vernazza, sits
behind the only natural harbour on this coast and was our favourite of all them. The village was hit by a massive mudslide in
October 2011, which wiped out the beach and many houses, killing 3 people and
since then there has been a massive relief effort since then to restore
it.
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| Vernazza - set in a fairy-tale bay |
We
couldn’t resist paddling our feet and wished we had brought our swimming
costumes!
Monterosso is the
largest of the villages, tucked into a bay of the headland of Punta Mesco.
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| Mel was in his element riding around the hilly and winding roads and not too many sheer drops for me to panic over! |
Heading
back from Cinque Terre we got a fabulous view over La Spezia, with its dramatic mountain range backdrop.
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| La Spezia port and marina |
It’s
a massive port and the largest naval base in the country but there is a nice
little marina that is lined with palm trees, that all sits in a bay known as
the Gulf of the Poets.
With the temperature reaching 30°c by 10.30am this morning, we decided another scooter
ride would be a good way of keeping cool. A 10km ride from La Spezia on the
coastal road took us to Portovenere, a beautiful old town that sits at the very tip of the Gulf of the Poets. The town’s rose and yellow painted houses sit
along the picturesque harbourfront.
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| Portovenere |
San
Pietro, the 13th century church that sits at the end of the town was
built over the ruins of a Roman temple to Venus and gives lovely views
overlooking the sea and bay.
Nearby
there is the rocky cove of Grotto Arpai.
It was a favourite spot of the poet Lord Byron, who swam across the bay to
Lerici to visit the poet Shelly and to this day the gulf has the nickname of
‘Bai di Byron’.
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| Looking across the bay that Byron swam |
Tomorrow we are moving on to Lucca.
Sally
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