The Cinque Terre

Walking at Christmas - when the family told us to literally take a hike.

December 2022: It was promising to be a bleak Christmas. Jon had moved back to the UK to spend more time with his son in the north of England. But teens grow up quickly and Junior was working at the pub most of Christmas. We looked to Jon’s brother, who told us there was no room at the inn—we couldn’t join them for a traditional family dinner! As soon as they delivered the shocking turndown, I found two flights to Genoa for the Christmas period. We’d walk the Cinque Terre.

As runners, we were not worried about the hiking. The logistics of the walks seemed easy enough. Terrible rain in previous years had eroded several sections of the path, including the Via dell’Amore (Path of Love) and many of the lower Sentiero Azzurro (Blue Path) sections, but higher routes over the tops were still accessible. But with such little notice and not much planning, accommodation on the route was limited in our price range, especially this close to Christmas.

As usual, when I have an idea, Jon says yes to the headline and I return from poring over maps and blogs with a presentation - its level of detail determined by exactly how much convincing my crazy plan requires! It was logistics I wanted to sound out on this occasion; where should we stay on this expensive stretch of coast? Each stop was served by a train station so Jon simplified everything by declaring that we should base ourselves at the larger town of La Spezia, and we would pop back by train to each day’s walk and restart our mini adventure.

We started the holiday in Genoa, a town we both knew nothing about, but were instantly fascinated by. It was the base of a maritime empire that extended across the Mediterranean and Black Seas. It was also a culinary heaven. I’d read up on where to eat the fresh pesto smeared on pieces of bread, where to watch patiently for hot chickpea farinata to come out of a giant furnace oven, where panini were an old-fashioned art form of 200 ingredients, and the sandwich maestro constructed a masterpiece after asking you for a few preferences. It was all street food eaten perched on stools or standing up, sticky-fingered and oily-smiled, washed down with Corochinato, a local vermouth, in a crowded bar filled with families finishing their Christmas shopping.

All my food dreams in one town

We were getting our calories in to walk them off. Moving to our walking base in the town of La Spezia, the apartment was a sauna, as our host had seen we were Greek and might not cope with Italy’s heating curfew. A thin door separated our apartment from his, and we could hear the Christmas Eve party next door, which they thankfully paused when it was realized we didn’t have an all important wine-opener. On Christmas eve we ate kebabs from a Kurdish family before buying fancy Italian produce for a Christmas dinner.

Jon was fighting a virus which knocked his energy, but stoically got up early so that we had enough time to walk in these short winter days. We started our 5 Terre walk at the larger village of Monterosso, a delightful place that saw us walking half of the day’s 9km total before we had reached the trail head, poking our heads around the corners of candy pink alleyways, to find an open passage, a small church full of detailed dioramas, or picturesque laundry hanging. This was our first diorama (presepe)- not to be our last. Every church had one, apparently an idea from St Francis to use animals and figurines to bring the nativity scene to the people. Not just your traditional manger and a donkey -we spotted mischievous children and quirky sheep, beautiful waterfalls, tiny fishing nets, and couples eating Christmas dinner

The colours of the villages were muted with winter skies, but the beauty of the coast shone through: yellow and pink houses, stripy covered boats. I thought it looked more real in the subdued winter colours, with barely a tourist around, just a few Italian families here and there going about Christmas activities; returning from shops, carrying Panettone; downing an espresso. A set of steps led out of the village and upwards, quickly throwing off our coats, as clouds hugged the headland, and the trail curbed past dramatic rocks off the shoreline.

Day two was an easy six kilometres to Corniglia; an easy walking day and we met the first and only fellow walkers on the high trails. We passed the peak of the Sentiero Azzurro at 208m, and followed stone walls and autumn coloured vines across the hill, as clusters of pastel coloured buildings beckoned in front of us.

Day three was a little longer at 8.5km and just over 500m elevation gain, as the coastal path was closed, directing us instead to the lesser-used inland routes, where sheer slopes held grapevines of green and gold. We preferred these steeper but quieter routes. Plans were afoot to ticket the Cinque Terre, charging people on the lower routes to control numbers and inexperienced walkers. We were walking in an area that sees many thousands of visitors in summer, our only off-season challenge was finding coffee on Christmas morning!

Towards Manarola the path plunged straight down, with a bit of scrambling. I found the descents hardest, controlling the speed and being sure-footed with gravity luring us down to the painted villages. A huge nativity scene was erected on the precipitous, near-vertical terraces of the approach into the village. We picked our way past Joseph, Mary, and the three kings on our descent.

This life-size nativity scene was started in 1961 by local resident Mario Andreoli who placed a cross on the hillside to honour his father’s dying wish, then began adding lights and later used recycled materials to create more than 250 figures turning his creation into the world’s largest illuminated nativity scene! It’s now managed by volunteers and during covid even included figures of front line workers, a symbol of community effort and values.

L to R: the back of 3 kings descending into Manarola; the path of love under reconstruction.

The three kings were wise to stop on that hillside; we continued for another ascent into Riomaggiore. This last section demonstrated a little of what we had been reading about the walk’s popularity when the paths were intact. Trippers from around the world descended on the little village, poured out of the train station and snapped photos on a small section of the Path of Love. It was undoubtedly pretty, but lost its impact by sharing it with others. We loved our higher routes, how the paths connected rural or village life: the wines and the farm paraphernalia in the hills, a cat sanctuary run by an unseen volunteer, the hum of Christmas dinners inside village houses, cheery greetings and farewells as guests arrived and left, the number of stairs to climb up and down from the station at the end or start of each day. The slightly harder climbs also earned us the right to a quaffable glass of wine costing only 1.50e at the end of each day before waiting for a train back to La Spezia.

We might not have had a seat at the family dinner table but this was one better!