Short 21km walk to Camolgli. Mostly road walking in rain, but wow, the towns I passed and visited were fantastic.
When I planned the trip, I had built up an expectation that today it would be sunny. Every picture of Camogli I have seen, the sun was shining. I’d planned a short day, so Lene could walk with me and we could spend the afternoon enjoying picturesque Portofino, Camogli and Santa Margherita Ligure. It rained!
Despite the weather, armed with umbrellas, Lene joined me, at least for part of the trip. Our accommodation in Genoa was on the trail, so it was still fairly early when we walked walked through the busy suburbs of Genova, walking east. There wasn’t a lot to see, beyond lots of traffic. There were many buses on their way into Genova, mostly full, commuting people into Genoa. We left the main road after ca. 3kms, and passed some smaller villages all very quiet.
We were back on the coast at the small fishing port of Nervi.
There is a coastal promenade along the coast in Nervi, which we followed until we left it to walk through the gardens of Villa Serra, one of three large homes next to each other, each with spectacular gardens – at least if you come at the right time of year. They were a bit gray just now. We stopped off for a coffee, having to walk back into Nervi.
I left Lene in the cafe, and continued walking. She started talking to some people at the neighbouring table and was soon giving English lessons to a couple of ladies. They were having English classes in the cafe, so they practiced asking Lene questions.
I followed the main road, passing many beautiful homes, all well renovated, many with spectacular views. The trail was supposed to head up into the hills inland, but it was damp and with low hanging cloud covering the hills, there would be nothing to see, so I stayed on the coast.
I passed a number of small coastal towns. Whilst obviously catering for tourists, especially during summer, there aren’t any big hotels, nor lots of touristy restaurants. It seems far more authentic than many coastal areas. The houses are colourful making these towns extremely picturesque. Outside the town I passed many wonderful homes, probably summer homes for the rich and famous, or handed down from generation to generation.
I reached Camogli, a small fishing village with, need I say, colourful houses along the port and sea front. Very picturesque, even when grey and cloudy, but I am sure even better when sunny. There were many restaurants along the port. Even on a damp and cloudy day like today, there were many tourists and many of the restaurants were doing a good business.
I met Lene at the station, she’d taken a train from Nervi. We walked through the village down to the port. We asked whether there were any boats sailing along the coast to Portofino – there weren’t. So we sat down for lunch at a port side restaurant and enjoyed lunch.
After lunch, we returned to the station and caught a train to Santa Margherita Ligure. We were lucky, a delayed train turned up on the platform almost immediately, so after a few minutes we arrived at the very picturesque Santa Margherita Ligure.
If you want to see brightly coloured Ligurian style houses around the harbour and beyond, then this is certainly the place to visit. The houses are beautifully painted and maintained in trompe l’oeil style, so they look like they have all types of engravings on them. There are many buildings, including churches painted like this in Liguria.
We walked around for a couple of hours before returning to the station to take the train back to Genova. We weren’t as lucky this time, the train was delayed by almost an hour.
We decided not to eat out, we’d already had a two course lunch, and bought some bread, ham, cheese, strawberries and wine. Everything tastes so much better in Italy 🙂