Lazy in Liguria

Day 17 - August 15

The beach at the campground turned out to be my absolute favorite one, so I woke up with the rising sun and went in for a long swim, from something like 6 am to 7 am. By 8 in the morning, I was packed up and ready to leave. Oh, BTW, here I really thought of spending one full day there, it was a viable option, so nice was the water, but my curiosity (or others would label it "paprika in my butt"...) got the upper hand and I moved on.

Now at La Spezia begins Cinque Terre. I have covered this by bike on an earlier trip of Tuscany, I remembered the steep hills, where the small, colorful villages are at the seafront, with winding switchbacks leading to these, the main road running at a considerable altitude. What the heck, I had already "cheated" on this trip by taking a train from Triest to Venice and from there to Verona: I decided on taking a ship through Cinque Terre and exploring it from the water. A benefit was that some of the ships left right from Lerici, the town I was staying at, so I did not have to backtrack to La Spezia (which wasn't one of my favorite towns). I crossed the hill from the campground to the center of town (that I rode on the previous night), bought a ticket just after the booth had opened, purchased a large breakfast from a local Coop and boarded with my bike for a 9:30 departure, bound in a westerly direction towards Monterosso, with four other stops (Porto Venere, Riomaggiore, Manarola and Vernazza). In a nutshell, it was a beautiful trip, as one of the first ones to board, I had a great seat on the deck and just like a Japanese tourist, (sorry...), snapped away my camera every minute. Here is a small selection.

Here I made the one (and I believe only…) regret of this entire journey. Do you see the last picture with the large waves? This was at Vernazza, the last but one stop. I was watching at amazement how the waves were rolling, with (a few) people daring to jump in - and while it did cross my mind to disembark, somehow I did not. I was maybe tired, perhaps I had in mind that the bike was stacked in the middle of the ship and it would have been complicated to disembark with it - not sure, I just sat there for the five minutes, wanting to be there in the water, but not doing anything about it. When in Monterosso, the final destination, I thought of buying a return ticket to Vernazza, but then it would have meant a lot of time lost.

So I had a look at Monterosso, a nice town, albeit really touristy. I knew there was only one and only road getting out of town - and this was, yet again, up and up and up. Below you can see the village from the seaside and from further up. Within a few kilometers, you gain about 600 meters of altitude - equating to a steady 12% (or so) incline.

The view was quite amazing, yes, I did suffer quite a bit, but it was worth the ride...

It took me quite a while, about an hour and a half, to reach Levanto, the next town just a dozen kilometers away, there I went in for a swim to cool off and then had some lunch in a park.

The road again started to incline, in the full heat of the Ligurian sun, boy, it was a tough going. My two large water bottles quickly ran out, I had to stop at a house to get some water. This was after munching on a bush full of ripe blackberries - the combination of the heat, the fruits and the water I quickly drank made me feel nauseous for a while - but after about 20 minutes, I was on the go again.

I ended up back on the coast, in a small town called Deiva Marina and rewarded myself with an ice-cream. There were not a lot of cars on this stretch of road, as the main motorway ran high above, in the mountains. As I was about to leave, I suddenly see a sign saying no bikes allowed - and a few cars standing at a red light. It turned out that what (would have) followed was a series of long tunnels. I asked a driver if he thought I could make it, he told me not only it is prohibited, it would be also very dangerous to bike there and that he has never seen anyone actually doing it. I did not plan in getting into trouble and found a way out: there was a train that helped avoid this section. As the train was an hour away, I went in for a swim.

(I believe) the train took me to Riva Ponente, from where I was on a regular road again. I rode to the town on Lavagna, where, after quite some searching (it was still the long weekend of Ferragosto…), I found what was probably the last room in entire Italy, in a rather run-down 3-star hotel for Eur 80, in a hole of a room - normally, I would have never paid more than half for this kind of an accommodation - but I was still happy to get a hot shower and a bed to sleep in.

Here is the map for the day. Apparently, I only made 55 kilometers that day, less the 15 km or so by train, so was it just 40 kilometers? I guess. Ah yes, I started only at around noon, after the ship voyage. Still, I climbed about 1,000 meters, only to descend the same amount. Let us call this my "resting day".