Torriglia, Liguria.

Tuesday, 19th May.

It was our bedtime by the time the soccer match finished last night and we crashed, waking this morning to brilliant sunshine and feeling a little better than we did yesterday.
Our initial plan for today was to drive to Levanto from where we intend to begin our assault on the Cinque Terre.   It was a lovely drive, winding through the mountains and we took a little detour to Torriglia, arriving just after 1.00pm and decided to stay overnight.  This is not a tourist town as we discovered on a walk around but is an old town boasting some attractive buildings with loads of character.  Three double scoop icecreams and a mint granola cost €1,50 each at a small bar and the owner was such a helpful, friendly young man that we're going back this evening for coffee.

(All's well that ends well...we took a wrong turn on the way here, necessitating a u-turn near a bend on a narrow uphill road which we negotiated easily but Les, whose van is longer than ours and has a low bike rack, became stuck when backing on to a steep driveway and had first to remove the bikes, then the rack, before he could move out of the way of the traffic...fortunately, there was little of that and we were on our way again).