The Cinque Terre consists of five villages along the Ligurian coastline in northwest Italy.
One of the attractions is that you can walk between them. So, that was today's quest.
We met Steve at Monterosso station at 9.30am and caught the train to Riomaggiore the southen most of the CT villages where our walk was to begin.
The first part of the walk, to Manarola, is along a man made coastal path and is an easy stroll, lulling you into a false sense of security.
For the next section, to Corniglia, our guide book gave us the choice of a route through the hills or an easier coastal route. Still suffering a few aches from yesterday's trek we decided on the coastal route, which was okay, however it ended with a climb of 382 steps!
After some refreshment we struckout for Vernazza where we planned to have lunch. The path was very narrow in places and there were many, many steps. Eventually, we reached the village and found the restaurant that had been recommended to me for its tomato sauce. It was very nice.
Once we had rested we began the final part of the walk, to Monterosso. Boy was it hard. The start of it was mostly steps going up, all very uneven, and extremely narrow cliff edge paths with no handrails. The descent into Monterosso was down what seemed to be thousands of uneven steps and by now my knees and hips were theatening to go on strike. Eventually we arrived back in Monterosso.
The walk was very hard, but the views were spectacular.
Once back in our 'home' village we then went for a much needed and much dreamed about (during the walk) dip in the sea, which was great.
We're planning to take the train back to one of the villages tonight for dinner, as it's Steve's last day tomorrow.
