The Ligurian coast (the Rivieria dei Fiori) may be little known but behind its pebble beaches and sun-loungers are some fabulous places to visit. Here is my personal selection of some  “must sees and must do’s”. I was travelling with a small group of bloggers from all over the world , courtesy of the Timon Lepidus Trip.

Fabulous thing to do No. 1: have breakfast at sunrise.

We were staying in an apartment in Imperia and had a lot planned for today so Alessio was insistent that we had breakfast at around 7am. Now you might think, and I certainly thought, that having breakfast at  7 was not what you would do on holiday.  But this was not a holiday – we were there to walk and see his selection of sights and attractions and give our “expert” (as travel bloggers) , honest, feedback and opinions about our experiences. And I have to tell you that breakfast at sunrise on the terrace on a warm day is a fabulous way to start the day.

It makes everyone happy.

From left: Katarina, Andrea (it was his apartment), Marika, Els and Inma

But if you are a blogger you must make sure that you take pics of your breakfast before anyone has started to eat it.

And when you are having breakfast you will need to be filmed eating it.

Alessio was seldom seen without his camera

This was the most perfect morning, and we had several more just like it, but sadly there was no lingering to be had over a second cup of coffee  as we had to be down at the van by 7.45 to be whisked back to the French border where we would be starting today’s walk.

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Zoom, zoom, through the scary tunnels.

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Fabulous thing to do No.2: take photographs of the Italian military wearing feathers in their caps. 

It was a matter of some debate in our party whether this was an OK thing to do or not as one did not want to get arrested, and spoil Alessio’s day so some people preferred to take pictures of the French side of the border…

Inma; a reluctant subject

…and Katarina, very kindly took some  pictures of me.

Katarina’s pic: making the best of a bad job

Nope, it doesn’t look much better from the side (thanks Katarina for the pic )

Overall, the message here, is that at the beginning of any journey you need to take pictures.

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Fabulous thing to do No.3: have a swim – or at least a paddle.

Now in theory our task was to walk along the beginning of route of the Via della Costa – a pilgrim path which mostly keeps close to the coast, visiting lots and lots of churches on the way.  But Alessio plans to amend this somewhat, cutting  out some churches and adding other places of interest. He works part of the time for a “no profit company that organize social services and projects to promote our land abroad”.

Liguria is known as the Italian Riviera, so one of the things that they are proud of is their beaches and the sea, so after half  a mile of walking by some rather packed-with-loungers beaches….

You’ll gonna want to like your neighbours on beaches like this.

….Alessio wanted to give us the opportunity to strip off and get wet (only if we wanted, of course).

Beatrice and Marika had clearly come prepared for this.

Katarina was in there like a flash…

…and was soon demonstrating an impressive ability to float motionless in the sea. Like a whale, she said, which I thought a touch unkind to herself. Seal, perhaps. With bumpy bits.

Els preferred to paddle…

….and Inma to contemplate.

Alessio dutifully recorded the response of the group…

… and I took some pictures of the locals.

Selfies were required for one’s posts, natch.

A jolly time was had by all.

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Once dried off we had  to climb away from the coast a little…

….followed by a fairly unpleasant walk by a busy road,  Alessio asking us to look out for the yellow markings to identify that we were on the Via della Costa.

See post on right

We even had to walk through one of those scary tunnels.

But we soon got back to a path  called the Via Julius Augustus away from the road, giving Lorenzo a chance to do a little showing off by climbing a tree.

He’s big on climbing, having “done” Everest, so maybe he needs a little climbing fix each day.

This path led right through the lower part of the Hanbury Botanic Garden, which brings me to….

Fabulous thing to do No.4: Visit the Hanbury Botanic Garden (also known as La Mortola) – but probably in the Spring

OK, a little back story. With my Garden Photographer hat on, I had been quite excited to see that we would be passing through what is generally accepted as one of Italy’s best gardens. So much so with Alessio’s help I had arranged at the end of this week to go and stay with Lady Carolyn Hanbury, who still lives in the grounds, and photograph the place “properly”.  However, a couple of weeks before the trip she had written to say that the garden had suffered pretty badly in the summer’s drought and she thought it wasn’t looking good. With some owners they might be just being modest but on this occasion I took her word for it and changed plans.

Alessio had arranged for us to get into the garden from a gate in the Via Julius Augustus. Lorenzo, our main guide and translator for the week, is also a Friend of the garden and knew its history. He assembled us at the memorial to Sir Thomas Hanbury who established the garden in 1867.

I will tell you one other fact about him; he donated the money to the Royal Horticultural Society for them to buy the land that their garden at Wisley was established on.  Writing 20 years ago in her “Garden Lovers Guide to Italy”, Penelope Hobhouse described the garden as “magnificent”. Its original aim, she said was to grow everything that would flourish on the site. In my view plant collections, seldom, if ever, make a great garden. But on our visit, many of the plants were shrivelled and stressed,…..

Hedge of Box affected by blight

…..and a lot of the  structural elements of walls and paths were crumbling and cordoned off by ugly warning tape. Carolyn Hanbury was right – it was not looking magnificent.  I was rather rude to Lorenzo by boycotting his talk and making my way up to the villa.

The house, painted in muted ochre shades,  is attractive …..

… and from it are super views out to the Ligurian Sea, the trees doing a good job of hiding the exhausted plants on the ground.

I would have liked more time to explore, but I doubt that I would have loved the garden more.; I’m not sure what my colleagues thought of it.

Back on the path, the next few miles had us mostly walking by the roadside and suburban footpaths as we climbed up towards Ventimiglia, the rather unpleasant road walking being made up for by increasingly good views of this quite highly developed coast.

By the time we arrived at Ventimiglia we were pretty hungry. Alessio had arranged a little grocers to provide us with a buffet lunch, which brings me onto:

Fabulous things to do No.5: eat local food

The shop owner, Maria, had been up cooking for us at 7am and had laid on the most wonderful spread of pizza,stuffed pastries and cakes. The delicately flavoured fillings were of cheeses, vegetables, and some with anchovies, each labelled.

We browsed and gorged and praised, Maria beaming with pleasure at our appreciation.

Mind you, this was an absolute carb-fest; so much for the healthy Mediterranean diet.

Maria spotted that Els’s legs were covered in angry mosquito bites and insisted on nursing her wounds.

Meanwhile Inma was getting into serious food photography.

It was a lovely, inspired touch of Alessio’s to have given us such a great introduction to some local delicacies and to have found such a lovely woman to provide us with them.

After lunch a local guide joined us and provided us with:

Fabulous things to do No.6;  have a guided tour of Old Ventimiglia

I used to have quite a prejudice about guided tours. I suppose it was a notion that because they were very structured and would inevitably have some irritating people in them, it would be better to just wander around. But I’m all for them now.

Our guide was Italian and did not speak English very well, so Lorenzo stepped up for the next hour or so and did a good job. I can’t remember most of what I was told, but did register that Old Ventimiglia used to be a Very Bad Place and was now being made into a better place by people with money buying a doing up the properties. T’was ever thus.

A casual glance into an open upstairs window revealed that the insides of these old houses must be quite amazing.

I loved all the narrow, shabby streets, with people’s washing hanging from the upstairs windows.

Not for the first time, it occurred to me that you could make a great book just of photographs of doorways.

I’m sure its been done

Something I had never seen before and which marked this culture as different from mine were the Necrologi; boards in the street where families  would post notices, often with pictures, of their recently dead ones.

We visited several churches….

…..Inma discovering that the cold marble floors were very effective at relieving back-pain.

This being the Oratorio dei Neiri

Most of the interiors of Italian churches are very elaborate, but I am always more moved by the simpler ones; the old cathedral was a gem.

We were taken down to the crypt, where, If I got this right, non-believers could enter from outside the church be baptised before entering the main body of building.

The outside of the cathedral was splendid, too.

Yes, take a guided tour of Old Ventimiglia, but make sure that your guide speaks English (if you do).

We were finishing our walk in New Ventimiglia.  It was an easy amble down the hill.

We crossed the pedestrian bridge, from there taking a glance back at the old town on the hillside.

It was always a mystery how our mini bus – always driven by Alessio, who was with us most of the time- arrived at the end of the day. He had not yet arrived, so we headed for the beach where Katarina had a top-up swim.

We had walked about 10 miles  – not including our guided tour. Long enough for a hot day and although much of it had been by roads and on hard surfaces, I had still enjoyed both walk and sightseeing. Back at the apartment we had an hour or so to shower and change before, perhaps the best bit of the day.

Fabulous things to do No.7: Visit (or even stay at) the Cristina Armato Olive oil farm at Lucinasco.

One of the many privileges of press trips is that you are usually given experiences that the ordinary visitor could not have. Lunch at the grocers shop was one of these but this evening we had another treat. Alessio had arranged for us to have a guided tour of a small olive oil-producing farm in the hill-top village of Lucinasco, some 25 minutes drive from our base at Imperia, followed by dinner with and produced by the family (click the link on their name above for their website).

It was the most lovely of evenings.

We were greeted by Crisitina  , whose name they have used for their produce (not just olive oil, but the local Taggiasca olives and a tapenade) and her husband, standing quietly behind her.

She gave us a little talk about their (organic) concern and showed us their simple  but rather lovely agriturismo farmhouse just up the street (see their website). They even have a little one-room olive oil museum next to the house that we popped into. Then her husband (a rather shy, but charming man) took us on a tour of their land, explaining how and why they do what they do. 

Half way round we were joined by their donkeys.

This created a bit of an international incident when he was feeding them from a bag of stale bread he had brought. Inma (Spanish) took up a position against feeding them thus, whereupon katarina (Swedish) , who knew a bit about horses and donkeys, assured her there was nothing wrong with it. This led to a few terse exchanges and Inma saying that she knew it wasn’t OK but didn’t want to talk about it anymore.  (meanwhile the donks were happily munching on their rolls).

Supper at the house was the most special evening. We were squeezed into their front room where Cristina her husband, their young son and Cristina’s Mother and her husband brought us supper.

But first we tasted their Taggiasca olive oils, with Cristina pouring a little onto our plates and we dipping into this with a little bread. All excellent.

Then we received a procession of simple and delicious dishes, starting with crostini with their own tapenade, then bruschetta with their tomatoes. Little pots of white beans were followed by small Tuna fillets from fish caught that day and then small rolls of stuffed mackeral. Their son was so sweet, making his offerings in a slightly formal way. Gran was on at Christina about this and that in friendly banter. The atmosphere was light and warm.  It really felt that we were having a family supper and were amongst friends.

The wine was local and unlabelled – bought in bulk and bottled from larger vats. And very good. Pudding was home-made melon ice-cream. I was easily persuaded to have two helpings.  I can’t tell you what a special evening it was. I wanted to give something back, make a gesture, so I bought some olives, tapenade and oil to bring home and remind me of these lovely people in the Ligurian hills.