Five Lands pt 2

Rail and Trail of the Cinque Terre

The 5 towns are connected by rail and by trail but both, this is Italy after all, are less than stellar in arrangement.

The train system sort of works. Sure its hard to know where to get a ticket and when you do get one, many of the ticket validation machines are out of order. In Italy you have to have your ticket stamped by a machine before you get on the train or else if caught there is a fine of "minimum €25". That means 25 Euros plus whatever administration fee the fine collector deems appropriate at the time.

The towns are VERY busy with tourists, most of whom travel by train. Therefore (again, this is Italy) there are not enough trains, the timetables are guides at best and the trains sometimes don't stop at every station - this you find out when the train doesn't stop at the station.

At every station there are groups of newbie tourists on the train looking lost and frantically trying to work out which station the train has stopped at. There are signs (or should I say, usually is a sign) somewhere on the platform with the towns name but the trains are longer than the station so it might be that your door to get off is within the semi lit tunnel leading into the station.

When you do look at the guidance time tables you see that at peak times (e.g. end of the day), the half hourly trains (should be every 10 minutes really) suddenly become every 45 minutes or every hour or every whatever the hell they like. At this time, they also become much more erratic in where they stop. Today for example, we watched 3 trains go right by the Corniglia stop (the middle of the towns) which is currently very busy due to some trail issues.

 

The trails of Cinque Tera. The towns were hit very hard by flooding and landslides in September 2011. Many of the trails between the towns were simply washed away or buried in mud. The landslides were massive and the flooding pretty much destroyed the entire town of Vernazza. Much has been rebuilt, however some trails are not open yet which means that you can't walk from town to town and between some towns, you have to catch the train (depending on how you buy tickets, each journey is a small nominal fee of about €2 each which adds up a bit).

 

Two years post landslides, the trails remain closed between

Towns 1 and 2: Riomaggiore and Manorola. No "Lovers Walk" for us.

 

 

 

 

Towns 2 and 3: Manorola and Corniglia. The coastal path is also still closed although not signposted until you get about a km down the path and see the fence. Then you turn around and search for the sign to trail #6 which is a minor detour (up a damn big mountain via the town of Volastra which makes Caserta seem like Vegas, and then down again). As the name of the game is walking between towns and this trail is one of the few that are open, it would be very well signposted wouldn't it?

 

 

The only sign showing the path is #6. Tom us a while to spot it!

 

 

 

Towns 3 and 4: Corniglia and Vernazza.

 

In other words a lot of the trails are closed which had the potential to kinda detract from the hiking between villages experience.

 

 

Thinking about the quality of the trails and park, it seems disproportionate to the the vast amounts of money pouring in to the system each day of the season. Each rail journey is a separate fee and the park entry fees add up. This is a big cash injection into the system during tourist season.

Reading a bit, it seems that there was a grand design for the parks (open spaces, eco tourism kinda things) but over the years, similar to contractors who charge governments extraordinary amounts for simple tasks once they are preferred suppliers, corruption has meant that vast amounts of siphoning has occurred and the parks, remain far removed from the original tourist vision which is a shame.

 

 

The day of hiking.

We continue to be so weather lucky! It had rained most of the last week. Heavy showers which closed the trails and made the towns a relatively poor choice of hiking destination. It poured the day before we arrived but on the day of hiking, the ominous clouds mostly went away and other than 30 mins of rain conveniently coinciding with lunchtime, the rest of the day was bright sunlight.

 

There were LOTS of stairs

 

 

 

See next post for hike pics (warning, not very exciting) but there will be action men like the guys below.

 

 

The 50 push-ups challenge

 

 

 

Success in the "less than 50 push-ups challenge"

 

 

 

 

As I re-read this, it may give the impression that we didnt have a good time here? That isn't correct. We had a fantastic time and I am glad we came. The blog does give a representation of the frustrations of traveling in Italy which, I feel can detract from the overall experience, but it may be in retrospect (time will, by definition, tell) that its those unexpected alleyways and turns brought about by the unsigned road or detour around a newly closed path that lead us to things we wouldnt have seen and allow us adventures which become the things we will most remember. Sometimes a cigar is not just a cigar.

 

 

Enough