From Parma … … to the sea on foot Hiking guide for slow walkers by Roberto Cavanna This guide has the pourpose to describe the possible routes that make one to reach, by foot, the Riviera di Levante, leaving from Parma or, alternavely, from other places of the province. TheoreAcally, the possible routes are infiniAve, but, as they all request more days of hiking, those which generally offer more possibiliAes for accomodaons were selected, while on this part of the Appennino are rather rare. For this reason, for example, the Via del Sale has not been described: it passes from Langhirano and arrives to Aulla crossing the Pass of Lagastrello. I hope that in the future I will be able to add this path, together with others, whenever the condiAons for accomodaons will be improved. The most interesAng aspect of these treks is the climb over of the Apennine ridge. ALer a short stretch in the lowland, the climb begins gently on the first hilly area between vineyards and culAvated fields. Soon, as you climb and move away from the plain, the forest begins to take over, increasingly intertwining with the rare fields that are now used only for hay harvesAng. When you reach the ridge you will find a very wild context where the human presence is very sporadic and in some parts completely absent. If you follow the Via Francigena you will be immersed in the history witnessed by the beauAful and ancient villages of Lunigiana and the archaeological remains of Luni. If you choose the other desAnaons you will walk along a long ridge where nature is the absolute master and when you start the descent towards the sea, you will see a landscape that changes quickly: you leave the vast forests of oaks, beeches and firs and you cross ancient abandoned pastures that are slowly engulfed by the Mediterranean thicket. The scents and aromas of the Mediterranean become more intense unAl finally, you can immerse your feet, now exhausted, in the water of the sea. The different paths to reach the sea (the yellow indicates the Via Francigena path, the red the Sen6ero d’Italia, while the blue indicates the paths without signal). The yellow spots indicate the stop points where it is possible to find accomodaon and a dinner, and point of arrival and starts. There are two chines of these paths: the Via Francigena (in yellow), that allows you to get to the Cisa Pass and then to descend in Lunigiana, unAl you reach the ancient Luni a few steps from the sea; and the Senero Italia (in red) that, from the Cisa Pass, follows the Apennine ridge up to the Bocco Pass from where it is possible to descend to different places on the Riviera di Levante (Monterosso, Levanto, Bonassola, Framura, Moneglia and Sestri Levante) When to leave. The best season is spring: the temperatures are mild and there are abundant hours of light. Even autumn is a great Ame with the landscape enriched by its colors. During the summer, high temperatures at low and medium alAtude can be quite annoying. Winter, in the absence of snow (which unfortunately becomes increasingly rare year aer year), can be a good period for this trek, but presents the drawback of the closure of several recepAon faciliAes A glance on Sporzana Valley How to face the crossing Given that it is always possible to split the whole route throughout the year in short secAons of two or three days, in the paragraphs that follow I want to give you some useful Aps to experience it enArely without problems. No athleAc skills are required to complete the trek. It is instead necessary to be prepared from a physical and mental point of view. Physical training Since some stages are necessarily long, due to the scarcity of recepAon faciliAes, it is necessary to get used to long walks to gradually get over distances of thirty kilometers and differences in height around a thousand meters. The best thing to do is to spend the weekend walking on our mountains beXer if done in the area of YYthe route: this will allow you to deepen the knowledge of the territory that you will have to cross. A glance on the Taro valley at sunset from Casola How to orientate There is a detailed cartography on the internet that you can find on hXps://www.wanderreitkarte.de or alternavely on hXps://www.opencyclemap.org/ , but it is not easy to navigate the land using only these maps. Along the Via Francigena and the SenAero Italia the route is quite well marked and with liXle aenAon you should arrive at your desAnaon without any parAcular problem. Outward of these well-known routes the signals are pracAcally non-existent and a satellite navigator becomes very useful, which you can use following the GPS traces that I published on my website at this link: hXp://www.cadadello.it/ParmaMare/ParmaMare.htm. If you do not have a special navigator you can use your smartphone by installing a satellite navigaon app and directly downloading the route that interests you. I also recommend, before departure, to download the GPS tracks in KML format that can be opened with Google Earth; in this way you can analyze them comfortably on your home computer and have a quite precise idea of YYthe difficulAes you will encounter. Before leaving You should study the route carefully. Then get the maps of the route and look on the Internet all that can be useful to know about the difficulAes of the route. If you have a navigator, get the GPS tracks and analyze them carefully with Google Earth. Then try to idenAfy all the possible stopping places to dine and spend the night. All this will allow you to plan the routes in order to adapt their length to your needs. Before departure, check availability of accommoda,on facili,es and this, in addiAon to avoid the risk of spending the night outdoors, will allow you to evaluate the opportunity to weight or not your backpack with sleeping bag, maress and tent. The backpack must be prepared with maximum care, trying to make it, on one hand, as light as possible and, on the other, to fill it with everything and only the indispensable. A glaze on the Baganz valley from the top of Mount Croce, thereabout Casola During the journey When you are on the move, the keyword is "slowness". In summer the hours of light range from five in the morning unAl almost ten in the evening: you have more than sixteen hours of light at your disposal. Walking at a speed of two or three kilometers an hour, you can travel more than thirty kilometers in ten or twelve hours. It is useless, therefore, to be in a hurry to get to the shelter, it would only serve to bore you while waiAng for dinner. Try to get to the right place in Ame to take a shower and sit down for dinner. Never force the gait: if you feel that during a climb the pulse of the heart is increasing or that you are coming out of breath, you should stop to admire the wonders that are around you: landscapes, woods, flowers and ancient villages will not fail to amaze you. Stop now and then to listen to the silence: it will have many things to say to you. Do not pay any aenAon to your traveling companions who are urging you to increase your pace so much: sooner or later, they will have to stop and wait for you. You must never live the journey as a compeAAon with fellow travelers or with yourself but as a moment of knowledge and discovery of the places you are going through. Try to drink plenty of water and keep your water boXle full while refueling at each fountain. Before leaving, be informed about the availability of water along the route that, in many places, is rather lacking. At the end of the day When you arrive at the hostel and sit down at the table for dinner, be saated but do not gorge yourself, limit the use of alcohol, prefer beer to wine, eat slowly chewing for a long Ame: all this will facilitate digesAon and a good digesAon reconcile a deep sleep and, therefore, a good rest. It is necessary to try not to accumulate fague by alternang it with an adequate rest. Try to take care of your appearance too, and then shave and comb your hair regularly: a good look exorcises fague. The next morning, have an abundant breakfast, and for lunch, seXle for a sandwich and some fruit. • Terenzo How to choose the route This graphic indicates, with black dots, the points of departure, arrival and milestones; in red the kilometers that separate two neighboring points are indicated. In this way you can easily calculate the distance of the route you want to take and evaluate the difficulty. It is, therefore, evident that you can idenAfy different routes to reach the sea; the enAre route from Parma to the sea requires from five to seven days, depending on the desAnaon. If you do not have all this Ame available, you can split the enAre route in more than two or three days to travel over several weekends scaered throughout the year. So, for example, if you leave from Bocco Pass you can reach the Riviera di Levante in a couple of days, staying overnight in Velva, and if you leave Borgo Val di Taro you will arrive in Monterosso in three days.