Fifteen years ago I visited Italy for the first time. Having taken Latin in school, I really wanted to see Rome. My wife wasn’t that interested – she’d been there before.

She suggested we go to the Cinque Terre region, a place she had heard of but never visited. We had time, so we did both.

I loved Rome, and have been back a couple of times since. But I was also struck by the Cinque Terre, five coastal villages very much frozen in time.

For a long time they were only accessible by boat, or on foot. Then a rail line was built that allows access to a couple of them. Finally roads were put in to allow cars access to the villages.

On a hot July morning we took the train from Manarola to Monterosso de la Mare and started walking the coastal trail that connects the five villages. (You can’t do that today, landslides closed parts of the coastal trail in 2019, though it is supposed to reopen this year.) Our aim was to be in the last village, Riomaggiore, for dinner.

It isn’t that long a walk (12 kilometres), but there are a lot of ups and downs. Each village is on the water, and you have to climb down from the trail to visit it, then up again on the other side of town. My understanding is a lot of people set out on the trek but give up before the end.

I can understand that. With temperatures in the mid thirties Celsius I quickly emptied my water bottle. The only thing that kept me going was knowing there was liquid in the next village. And that our route was the easy direction, starting at the highest point.

I was looking at pictures from that trip the other day, and thought I should share some of them. I did share a few about seven years ago, but it seemed like a good time for a few more.

If you like walking, this is definitely an area of Italy you want to visit. Though as I get older I wonder if I would be up to the trip today. My guess is yes – I would just take it a little slower. There’s no shame in taking more than a day to walk the entire route.

All of today’s photos were taken coming into or in Vernazza, which was the first village we hiked to.