Stone upon stone: an Italian sojourn: Pretty in pastel

Cinque Terre has become one of the fabled tourist destinations in Italy these days: five little fishing villages clinging to the side of the barren and rocky Ligurian mountains, in perilous and inaccessible terrain, once subject to frequent pirate attacks and natural disasters that often reduced the village population considerably.

Today, there are boats, trains, cars and water-mobiles of all shapes and sizes between many of the villages, stretching from Genoa to La Spezia.

We, like many tourists, had too little time to spend visiting Cinque Terre: just one day; so we really only had the choice of a boat trip one way touching in on many of the villages, and a return by train, the latter after a walk between villages.

We opted for the boat leg first, leaving from the pretty harbour of La Spezia, where we were able to park our car for the final road leg home after our rail return.

Almost immediately, tiny villages, not part of the famous five, tumbled down to the sea, so it became tricky trying to remember which was which by the end of the boat trip.

But, they were all pretty in pastel, and interspersed with rocky ledges and low growing shrubs and garrigue.

Some so slanted on the edge of ravines that it was too easy to imagine another natural disaster taking all of it into the sea in one giant gulp.

From the boat we could see the railway lines built through gallerias and tunnels bored into the mountains, set low: 23 bridges; 51 tunnels. Today, trains stop regularly at many of the little villages, even at stations just a couple of minutes apart, and tourists, in the main, are the passengers.

We could also see one and occasionally two roads looping over viaducts and excavated through the mountains high above the villages that were built in the mid nineteen hundreds, though vehicular use is restricted down in the villages as the roads, carrugi, are just too narrow.

Tourists are everywhere, waiting in snaking lines for ferries, bottles of water, lunch and tickets to ride.

Many, though, are taking the time to walk, but often have to compete for road and footpath space with local taxis and delivery vans servicing hotels and restaurants: most servicing the tourists.

Way back, the only people living here were fishermen and those producing wines and good oils, eking out a subsistence living. The toughened villagers built dry stone walls, muretti, to contain their lands, and dug out terraces, ciàn, where they planted vines and olive trees that most years produced for them.

Way back they built round towers as lookouts for pirates. Often their rare visitors were penitents, seeking forgiveness for their sins, and in so doing were taking the Sanctuary walk between churches as part of their atonement. Times were tough, days were filled with hard work and very little reward, except for the scenery around them, and the fruits of their labour.

These days the villages are jam-packed with tourists, with gift shops, galleries, trendy cafes, seafood restaurants and boutique hotels, with stoney beaches to lie in the sun when folk are exhausted from all of that.

A dramatic change from Cinque Terra's early days.