1. Northern Italy: Italian Riviera 1 and 2, a 15-day walk Genoa to Portovenere: Overview

The walk follows well-marked historical trails.  One of the characteristics of the route is its flexibility: all the towns are connected by regular local trains, which means you can hop on and off the train to shorten the longer legs.  For these reasons, we have classified the Italian Riviera as a Grade 2 walk (“several walks on this tour are between 12 and 15 kms; orientation is straight forward and there are some long climbs”). Click here for details.

The accommodation on this fourteen-night walk uses the best available in each place, including an eclectic mix of fancy 4-star hotels; smart 3-star hotels, family-run pensione’s and a gorgeous family-run agriturismo.  All the accommodation is clean and welcoming.  All rooms have private en suite bathrooms.  A number of them have private swimming pools (although you will always have the option of a dip in the sea at the end of the day’s walk).

Like its inhabitants, the food of Ligurian is austere and reserved, based on the finest ingredients hard won from the rocky slopes of the Apennine Mountains and the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea.  The classic dishes are pesto (a basil, pine-nut and garlic paste, traditionally served with a local short pasta and diced potato); focaccia (a dimpled, rustic bread served with herbs and lashing of the excellent local olive oil) and farinata (a delicious flat-bread made from chic peas, dressed with more olive oil).  There is an abundance of very good seafood, complemented with very good, locally grown vegetables.  The most celebrated wines of the region are dry whites (Cinque Terre and Vermentino) but Liguria also produces some good reds (Rossese di Dolceacqua, Ormeasco and Colli di Luni Rosso).

Generous breakfasts are included each day (you'll need them for your walks).  With notice, the hotels wil be able to prepare a cut lunch for the walk.  A range of restaurant recommendations with contact details for booking your dinners in each town/village will be included in your tour notes.

To guide you through this wonderful walk, you will receive:  the Hidden Italy roadbook (an eighty-page A5 booklet that includes comprehensive daily walking notes accompanied by detailed maps, updated and revised each year);  access to the exclusive Hidden Italy App to complement the roadbook (the App is downloadable to Apple and Android devices and features information about the routes: maps, GPS tracks, altimetric profiles, etc; GPS navigation on all the routes; an alert function if you stray off the track; and an emergency function);  twenty-four-hour phone support from our Florence-based Operations Manager.

This 8 days/7nights walk takes you along the first half of the Italian Riviera Levante (the Riviera of the Rising Sun) walk.  It starts in the Genoa (Italy’s largest port, a marvellously eclectic city full of pace and rough-edged style) and finishes in the charming resort town of Sestri Levante.  The trail follows a rugged arc of coastline above the Mediterranean Sea.  It is regularly dotted with small fishing towns and ports that have managed to gain some purchase in the mouths of rivers and streams that have cut through the mountains.  Click here for details.

This 9 day/8 night walk is the second half of the Riviera di Levante (Riviera of the Rising Sun) walk.  It starts in Sestri Levante, a beautiful resort town on the eastern headland of the Tigullio Gulf and finishes at the gorgeous town of Portovenere on the Gulf of La Spezia.  It is a walk of two parts: the first three days take you through some of least visited parts of the Ligurian Coast, following well-marked mountain trails through unspoilt forests and staying in laidback coastal towns quite untouched by tourism.  The remaining days take you along the trails of the Cinque Terre, one of the most celebrated, and spectacular, stretches of coastline in the Mediterranean, following stone paths that have linked the fishing villages for centuries.  Click here for details.