For Sue- wishing her a speedy and complete recovery

Date walked: September 14th 2018

It’s been two months since my last post and I feel a bit rusty. No, that can’t be right, you can’t feel rusty; you can be rusty, I suppose, though only metaphorically. My absence is not for the want of material. I’ve two days to write up from Offa’s Dyke, and two glorious days to share from The Howgill Fells. And in total contrast to those sunny delights, three quite horrid days to do something with when I tackled the Llangollen Round in late November. But I am not sure when these will come to light.

I think I had just got a bit fed up with the relentless, self-imposed demand of publishing here every two weeks. And having got off that horse/bicycle/whatever, it has been surprisingly difficult to get back on. Not that I have tried very hard. Those otherwise leisure hours (though blogging does not feel like leisure) have been spent contentedly reading back to back all seven of the excellent Shardlake series of novels by C.J Sanson, and doing a lot of gardening (which feels closer to work than leisure but pays the same).  But our dear friend Sue is in hospital and misses my blog, so this is for her and maybe this will be a catalyst for my own blogging recovery.

This is the last of 4 days walking on Italy’s Ligurian coast. My company  was four  other travel bloggers from Europe, Alessio Tondo who had organised the trip and some colleagues of his. It is Alessio’s hope to establish a coastal walking route though Liguria which is less demanding than the Sentiero Liguria, and has less church visiting than the pilgrim route called the Via Della Costa (though just to confuse somewhat, it will share parts of both these paths). Alessio had brought us together under a banner of The Timon Lepidus trip, Timon Lepidus being a rare local lizard. So rare, in fact,  that in 4 days walking none of us saw one. So here is how one appears as envisaged by Alessio.

Over three very hot days we had walked from the French border to near we were staying in Imperia, a minibus taking us out to the beginning of each day’s walk and bringing us back to our apartment at the end (more or less, Alessio had pity on us and we used the bus to cut out a few bits when he thought we might expire through heat stroke).  We had been greeted every day by the most beautiful sunrises over the sea, breakfasting on the terrace of our apartment. But not today. Today it was raining. Proper, committed rain. Did you know that rain can take the edge of the taste of fresh croissants?

This was to be our last day’s walk and we started with a tour of old Imperia (Porto Maurizio) , Alessio handing us out plastic poncho’s as we got onto the bus.

Rather a fetching pixie-look, I thought – thanks to Alessio for this pic from the website

A short bus ride took us to the bottom of a funicular lift, which dragged us up to the top of the hill, saving us a lot of puffing.

Porto Maurizio was big on shabby chic buildings, all the better looking in the overcast light.

By popular demand we piled into a cafe after a little wandering, where despite the crumbs from breakfast still lingering round her chops, Katarina found space for a further almond croissant.  The rain continued to accompany us as we were guided by Lorenzo (a local who had been with us all week) down a glistening cobbled street to the Oratorio di San Pietro Apostolo.

Here we were met by Whoever It Is That Looks After The Church. This man’s enthusiasm for his church was matched only by his inability to speak English, so Lorenzo ably translated whilst we absorbed the atmosphere.

Katarina here showing her absorbency skills (though I think she should have removed her hat)

And there was much to appreciate here, from the extensive frescoes…

… to the strangely elongated crucifixion…

….. the painted cut-out depiction of Christ being removed form the cross…

… and perhaps the most particular, the statue of Saint Peter, which is perambulated round the streets on the shoulders of the faithful on his saints day.

It was a lot to take in.  On leaving we paused to appreciate the baroque facade.

We continued our own perambulation around the old city, under cover at first of a gallery overlooking the sea.

As with all our visits to the towns we had passed through, I lost track very quickly of what we were actually seeing and the rain was not conducive to my taking notes, so I will offer just a few more pics of Porto Maurizio before moving on.

If I remember rightly, after our tour of the old town we went back on the bus for a bit before being deposited on the sea front at Oneglia, on the far side of the new town.  The rain had eased off a lot by now. But perhaps I was wrong as this pic from Alessio’s website says that we were walking before Oneglia.

Thanks again to Alessio for the use of his pic.

I can say with some confidence that we were pretty well the only people waking on the beach, Marika….

…. and Alessio choosing to go barefoot when we reached the sandy bits.

The beachfront is divided up into small sections where you pay for the privilege of a lounger and a brolly, loos and a bar being provided for paying guests. Today the only people on the beach were the lifeguards and attendants who had nothing to do.

They certainly weren’t going to bother unfurling those brollies.

Walking by Marika I was struck by a tattoo on her ankle.

Getting a good pic became a mild obsession.

“I can fly”

(in case you are concerned, she was perfectly happy with this attention).  We ended our beach combing just before  San Bartolomeo al Mare, where a church visit awaited.

Lorenzo lives not far from here and his Mum comes to this church. I don’t remember seeing Holy Water in a dispenser before. I seem to remember that I did not find this one of the more interesting churches.

I presume that there must be acceptable reasons that you would take some; presumably not to water ailing pot plants.

We had lunch across the square from the church; it had stopped raining and the sun was out. Hurrah.

Thanks again to Alessio for capturing this moment

It was another carb fest, sadly, no pics to offer of the spread. I don’t know if I should be worried about my memory, because for the life of me I can’t remember what happened next.  I think we must have been taken by road to have a view of Cervo, where we were to be finishing, as that was the next pic I took.

Alessio’s gallery on the website would appear to confirm this but I think we climbed up the hill on foot to get to this viewpoint.

Once again thanks to Alessio for this pic

What I  remember then was getting back in the bus and been driven up a very steep and narrow road to a point near a summit of a big hill (god, this is embarrassingly vague). I am sure that Alessio had intended that we were to walk here from our lunch spot, so he must have decided that we were not collectively up for it.

I fell in behind Beatrice as we climbed the rocky track.

The view from here was fabulous.

I’m pretty sure that we are looking down on Marina di Andora.

It felt very much that this was the end of our trip.  Lots of pics were taken of us individually…

Marika

Miriam

….

Beatrice

… and collectively.

But Alessio had more plans for us. We returned to the bus and had a conference about what we were doing next. We had a couple of hours to kill before a rendezvous in Cervo with 5 amateur photographers who were going to take pictures of us individually (I’ll come to that shortly).  Alessio made the fatal mistake of giving us choices when in fact he wanted us to walk down to Cervo together and chill. Inma wanted to go to the beach for a last swim, and was asking Alessio a lot of stuff about how long it would take to walk, whether there were showers on the beach, could she get a lift there etc etc.  I  thought that the least we could do was do the final walk down to Cervo as Alessio clearly wanted us to and began to feel really pissed off with how self-centred Inma was being.  And I got the impression that I was not the only one who was beginning to feel angry.

So rather than have a blow up with Inma I decided to head off for the village and let the rest of them sort themselves out.  I was a few hundred metres down the track when Inma appears saying “you can’t get rid of me that easily”. At which point I told her to F__k off. This did not go down well.  She went into a full Spanish tirade about how I shouldn’t have said that and how she thought that I was such a courteous man and she felt let down. All of which I basically ignored. It seemed that the rest of the group had ended up walking down the hill so I was glad to join them and calm down.

It was a couple of miles of gentle descent on a rough track to get to the village and the sun and the views returned me to a better frame of mind, tough I kept my distance from Inma.

We were met by the mayor of the village  who had a cafe/bar there with some apartments and she had very kindly offered us a shower and a drink. We had brought a change of clothes  as we were also eating in the mayors house that evening, so we relaxed on the bar terrace as we took it turns to shower. Time for an ice cream…

… and to take some pics and  contact details of my fellow walkers.

So here’s a nice pic of Miriam ready for her photographer…

I had to take loads of Katarina until she was satisfied that I had a nice one of her. This is probably her least favourite.

What Alessio had set up with a local camera club was that each of us would be assigned a photographer who would take us into the village for an hour or so for a shoot. The photographers would then submit 5 images for him to judge a few days later and he would award a prize for the best portrait.  The photographers began to arrive around 5pm and we stood around somewhat awkwardly for a while wondering who was going to be with who until Alessio paired us up and sent us off.

Here’s a snap of who I was assigned.

My photographer – Graciella-  appeared to have very little English and I speak no Italian so this was not going to be easy. On the other hand I felt perfectly happy to put myself in her hands and let her decide what she wanted to do. Cervo is a small village with a very pretty church…

…. and a labyrinth of attractive backstreets.  As we wandered around I had a strong sense that Graciella really didn’t know what to do with me.  And when I did get to see her selections I can’t say that I was impressed, but you can judge for yourselves.

And the winning shot for the competition? Katarina, floating down some stairs.

I have to admit it is a really nice pic

The mayors home was just off one of the backstreets and we arrived to find a large table nearly filling a room directly off the street. There were several of the mayors friends there so we were a big group. As with all the rest of the meals we had been so generously given during the week, we had a huge feast of local delicacies and wine.  Inma sat next to me saying “I haven’t got over you telling me to f__k off”. “Haven’t you?” I replied and moved to the other end of the table.

I can’t tell you much about the food but I do remember holding a long conversation about Brexit with a very elegantly dressed woman who used to work in a British embassy. I say conversation, but I think that I was probably a bit pissed and was holding forth about why I thought it was right that we should leave and what was wrong with the EU. Well, no one told me to f__k off, so I probably got off lightly.

The meal over we moved outside on to the pavement for coffee.

So that’s it just about it from this trip. The next day Alessio took us to another  town called Pieve di Teco. We were ushered into the town hall  where we had to fill out an enormous questionnaire about what we thought about  every aspect of the trip and be videoed individually.

After the feedback session we were given lunch and then had a guided tour of the town, but somehow by then I felt saturated with sightseeing. Lorenzo took a great pic of us all. Thanks Alessio, to you and all those who we met and received hospitality from. It was a wonderful trip.

Many thanks to Lorenzo (I think) for this pic. Left to right: Katarina, Me, Alessio, Els, Marika, Beatrice, Inma, Miriam.