France/Italy roadtrip – the Cinque Terre path: Corniglia and Volastra | alison richards

I left Vernazza a little before 10am, and set off for the third town of the Cinque Terre, Corniglia. This was an easier 3.5km section, but it was so humid that I was sweating buckets, which made it seem a lot harder. It was a lovely path though.

The ocean was a constant through most of the hike….

I passed a more built up section in between the two villages which had a cafe and stopped there for a freshly-squeezed glass of orange juice with ice. Honestly, one of the best drinks I've ever had, it was delicious! The cafe also had the most amazing view of Corniglia.

A little closer, and you can see all the little colourful buildings!

The cafe that I stopped at was one of those buildings up on the hill.

The landscape changed a little and soon, instead of walking through forest areas or vineyards, I was now walking through olive groves. I was getting closer and closer to the town of Corniglia until I finally made it and suddenly came upon lots of people starting out walking from there to Vernazza - I think a lot of people did this section of the path. I said buongiorno to them and continued to the village.

The town of Corniglia, perched high above the ocean

Gardening must be tough on these terraces

Corniglia was a fairly quiet village compared to Vernazza (and Monterosso was quiet too but it was raining and early so its not a fair comparison), and I wandered the streets a little bit. I think it was quiet due to the lack of a beach, as the other two had had some sand and swimming possibilities. It also wasn't very big, so it didn't take long to see all the streets, so it was time to move on.

You couldn't walk from Corniglia to Manarola via the original path and instead I had to detour through a village called Volastra. This probably meant that Volastra was busier these days than it had ever be, but it was quite out of the way and added quite a bit of distance to the walk. I left Corniglia and set off on this detour.

I stopped to take this photo when I met a couple from America who asked where I had walked from. When I said Monterosso, they looked at me and said “wow” and moved on. I heard them as they walked away saying “thats a LONG way away!”. I don’t think too many people are crazy enough to do the Cinque Terre path in one day!

The “Terre” part of Cinque Terre means terraces… and you can definitely see why it was named that way.

The walk from Corniglia through Volastra was probably the hardest part of the whole hike, due to it being up a LOT of stairs, then down a LOT of stairs! It also involved walking through people's gardens, which I found a little weird, plus out to an old disused billboard. It was the longest section too, covering about 7km by the time you made it out of Corniglia and into Manarola proper. Plus, I took a couple of detours, of course!

Manarola, my destination. But it wasn’t quite as easy as just walking along the cliff paths, I had to go up into the mountains to the left and back down again

You can see Corniglia and Monterosso in this image

I only had this section left to do because there was no detour for the path from Manarola to Riomaggiore that was ruined by a landslide. I was dying for some food, so even more motivation to keep on going! I'll save Manarola to the next post to give it its due (it was a lovely village and lots of photos were taken!). But how pretty was it, even from a distance?! Definitely worth the sweating and sore legs!