No biking today. We’re taking a break and taking a hike up into the amazing hills that start right from the coast here. Vietri sul Mare is a lovely little place and not overrun by tourists - unlike the better known towns along the Amalfi coast that really get overwhelmed. It’s not the most convenient base for a hike though, and it took some map studying to come up with a reasonable walk that stays off the main roads. The one we come up with is this eight mile walk to Maiori, a village further west along the coast:
Once there, we’ll catch a taxi back to Vietri. It looks reasonable enough, and we found it two different ways - Rachael did some Wikiloc research and found this highly recommended hike; and in the meantime I just stared at trail maps and came up with exactly the same result. Obviously it’s the hike to take. It does max out at 3,000’, but neither of us dwells on that as much as we should. We’re ready for a change of pace from the bike, after all.
We get a rather late start to the day, enjoying sleeping in and taking our time after the stress of yesterday’s events. We get started about 11, beginning by dropping three hundred feet to the coast - a necessity, to reach the start of the path we’re planning to walk.
The main commercial street through upper Vietri. Our room is just beyond that restaurant in the middle of the street, which we dined at last night.
Scott AndersonTo Andrea BrownI should have said something about that. There are many walls like this in Vietri, as well as ceramic shops. The town is renowned for its ceramics. Reply to this comment 5 years ago
Vietri is a very pretty place, with an attractive waterfront about three hundred feet below. It’s hard to believe that we’re less than a mile from the outskirts of Salerno, a significantly large city.
The hike gets off to a frustrating start. From the beach, we need to climb back up 300 feet to a minor road, Via Madonna dell’Arco. We can see it up there, but can’t see how to get there. There’s no staircase that we can see at the spot our GPS points us to, so we ask a guy at the restaurant. He walks back the beach with us to a staircase, and points up. We climb for about 250 feet before coming to the locked gate below a large hotel - he must have misunderstood and thought we were trying to get back to the hotel. We can see the road just beyond it, but we can’t get there from here. No choice but to walk back down to the beach.
A very nice but steep staircase to nowhere. Not the best start to a hike with 3,000’ of climbing.
Back at the beach, we retrace our steps and find a different staircase that looks plausible, leading up to a small church hanging off the side of a cliff. This staircase works great, and takes us all the way to the street we’re trying to reach. Unfortunately, the last few yards of the climb apparently cross private property, and again our way is blocked by an unscalable locked gate. Especially frustrating, because this gate opens right onto the street we’re trying to reach, if it weren’t padlocked. We look around for someone to ask about the lock, but see no one. Curses, foiled again!
Another dead end, and worse than the first because it ends so tantalizingly close to the road we’re trying to reach.
Finally, we’re successful on our third try. The stairwell was concealed behind the scaffolding of a restoration project, and we had just walked past it twice without seeing it. The path, once we finally find it, really is quite nice and gives us fine views back at Vietri and ahead to towering Monte Avvocata. We’d just as soon we hadn’t added an extra five hundred feet just to get to the start of our hike though.
After this we climb steadily for the next hour, through Raito and Albori before finally leaving the stairways behind and starting up the side of the ridge. It doesn’t take long though to be obvious that we’re not making the summit. The trail gradually steepens and degrades to a steep rocky scramble. With still about two thousand feet of elevation gain ahead of us, we reach the obvious conclusion and head back. Maybe if we’d started out earlier - say by about 20 years - this hike would have been realistic, but not now, in midafternoon on a 90 degree day. Better not to be the subject of a rescue mission.
On Via Madonna dell’ Arco, the quietest walking route out of Vieste.
Too intimidating, actually. Before long the hike turns to a rocky, 25% scramble. We keep at it for awhile and then stop, do the math, and decide we need to turn back.
Back on Via Maria dell’ Arco again, descending toward Vietri. We haven’t done what we set out for, but we don’t mind - the views going back the way we came are great too.
Ending the day at the viewing balcony overlooking the sea in Vietri. The usual appealing small town scene we enjoy so much here. Hard to believe we’re on the tourist-crazy Amalfi coast.
