Adventurous hike from Camogli to San fruttuoso

This is my seventh post in Liguria Series. Today we move onto Camogli- San fruttuosso, a place on Riviera di Levante in Liguria,Italy.

This is our third stop on ‘this’ part of Ligurian coast and just like the previous two – Cinque terre and Rapallo, we will go hiking, this time from Camogli to the Abbey of San Fruttosso.

Difficulty level is gradually increasing; If we put a scale of three, Cinque terre was at level one, Rapallo to Montellegro was level two and this one was surely level three.

When friends and colleagues heard about our adventures at cinque Terre and Rapallo with a four-year old, they suggested us a hike from Camogli to the Abbey of San Fruttuoso.

Two routes for Camogli – San Fruttuoso hike

There were two routes to Camogli; one that went inland, was steeper but short and another that went along the sea and thus was more scenic, was less steeper albeit with few difficult stretches, but longer. So we chose the second one.

A two km easy walk from the train station led us to a long flight of stairs, some hundred in number. Stairs wind through olive groves and tall walls which hide all the villas and rural houses from the prying eyes. It took perhaps an hour or so with all the photo breaks and view breaks.

These stairs reached a small old town San Rocco with beautiful views of sea.

Here the two paths fork to Abbey, the one inland and another along sea which we had chosen. A walk of some twenty minutes took us to a small hamlet of pretty houses in village La Martola.

From here the path became unpaved and moved into dense woods.

We walked and walked and relished all the views of sea, each one putting the previous one to pale in comparison.

All this leisurely hike suddenly faced a sheer cliff which could only be traversed by holding a metal chain.These were definitely sturdy but traversing these was scary. The rock face was nearly vertical, so one had to go hand-over-hand and leg over leg along this horizontal chain, pressing the body along the rock surface, exactly perpendicular to the sea.

It was a small stretch, perhaps not more than ten metres but at a height of some seventy metres. Doing this with a kid was impossible so there ended our adventure.

What do I remember most from this walk? A photo of us taken by my four-year old kid.