The day started warm and in bright sunshine, we looked forward to a three hour journey to one of the highlights of the tour, the coastline of the Cinque Terre. Photo opportunities to abound from the ferry and the results to keep our customers happy. Travelling well following the satnav we arrived at La Spezia and as we climbed out of the town there were some spectacular views of the harbour. Carrying on up the highway we took the Riomaggiore turn off and commenced along the coast to our hotel just outside Manarola, the next of the five. Lovely sweeping views from the coastal road and we were seven kms from Riomaggiore when the road came to an abrupt end with fencing across it, what the !!!!!! Unknown to us at the time the road had been blocked by a landslide last week and was impassable to traffic. Well what to do now, one of the problems with satnav is not being able to scroll the map, the road map of Italy we had was not of a scale that we could see the smaller roads. After a bit of satnav magic we could see that we maybe able to approach the Cinque Terre off the highway from the north. This meant of course retracing out steps back to La Spezia and the highway, there are no other ways to our destination, of course we expected the road to be of the same quality as the one to Riomaggiore. How wrong we were.
Coming back off the highway the road started out ok and Sally satnav had given us a new route to Manarola which was fine until we hit the first police roadblock, no tourist traffic allowed ! "but officer we have a reservation", says Penny, "That's ok señora please proceed but via Vernazza and S. Bernadino", he says. Excellent we thought and set off the way he pointed, goat tracks would be an exaggeration, the road narrowed at times to one car width, cars coming the other way were a trial and not only did they wind and twist but we were climbing up hills and down into valleys, sometimes part of the road had washed away at the sides and of course being a left hand drive car meant that Penny was hanging over the drop side especially were there was not a guard rail. She was not happy and how we will straighten out the hand hold on her side I will never know. The road had a designation of SP61, penny christened it Spew and Puke 61. Coming this way of course meant that we were at the wrong end of were we were going so from the police check point it was 22 kms to the hotel but of course this took into account the twists and turns. In all it added two hours to the journey and a great amount of teeth clenching but we made it to the hotel. Phew!
The hotel was great and the host Anna was very friendly and sympathetic of our journey, she has had problems getting supplies and she told us that it won't be reopened until next Saturday. Oh, this means we have to repeat the journey tomorrow, rapture........ Now we have to go and get the ferry at Manarola, five minutes down the hill from the hotel, by now we are running out of time and the last ferry is around 5-30pm, Anna asks husband Giuseppe if the ferrys are running today... What.... apparently if the sea is a bit rough they stop but he answers in the affirmative so down to the village we go. we finally make it to the ticket office. Sorry they say ferry services are not stopping here today they are only running from the two towns at either end, Riomaggiore and Monterosso. This is turning into a bad day and Peter is getting grumpy..! it was decided to have a late lunch as getting on the ferry was looking hopeless. The lunch was also hopeless, disinterested staff and expensive, five euros for five small pieces of bread we didn't ask for, forgot your advice John. Peters mood was getting cloudy, no silver linings here. There is a train line that links the five towns and as Manarola was not very inspiring we caught the train to Monterosso intending to walk around and catch the train back. I must say at this point that even the road being closed tourists were coming in by boat and train from outside the area and it was crowded. The beach at Monterosso was packed, like an English beach on a bank holiday. While we were strolling Penny sees a ferry in the harbour so prodding Peter along we head for it, we have not seen a ticket office but she fronts up to the gangplank and asks when the last ferry is , this is the last the matalot say but using her feminine charm gets us on board even though you buy the tickets a couple of hundred metres away up the beach, no problem the guy will sell them to us on board. Things are starting to go our way, all the ferries we had seen that day were packed but there were less than twenty people on this one, we could move about without a problem. To say the trip was good was an understatement we could not have had a better opportunity for photographs, plenty of space and the sun was out and in the right place shining on the towns.
The day was traumatic but all's well that ends well, to quote Peters cousin.
Goodbye Il Moro Novo and Cortona
Travelling well and on time
Ahhhhh Road Closed
Beach at Monterosso
Views of the Cinque Terre
How it should be... peaceful
La Spezia
This is not going well Peter!
Now it's Coming Together
Sqiggerly roads and the pin in our destination, all the yellow ones we drove on....!