And it continues

I had achieved the most important goal. And actually, I wasn't as happy about it as I maybe should have been. Because it also meant that the Alps were now behind me. According to the good old wisdom "the journey is the goal", my tour was not about lazily lying on the Mediterranean at some point, but rather about the countless trails along the way. And there could have been even more of them. But autumn was approaching, and for that reason alone, it was time to open a new chapter. And I am no less motivated to spend the remaining weeks until November in the saddle of my faithful bicycle than I was on the first day in St. Moritz.

On the last meters before Ventimiglia, I already got to know the Alta Via dei Monte Liguri, shortly AVML. My further plan was now to roughly follow this path in the other direction to cycle through the mountains along the Ligurian coast to La Spezia. That should at least keep me busy and entertained until mid-October.

But before I continued, I treated myself to a day off by the sea with lots of delicious Frutti di Mare and refreshing Aperol Sprizz. You can do that for a day, but how the majority of vacationers manage to do it for one or two weeks in a row will probably remain a mystery to me forever. In any case, I was already getting excited again at the thought of the many beautiful trails waiting to be discovered in the hinterland.

My next destination for that was Pigna, the starting point for a trail circuit over Monte Torragio. This stage was only 20 kilometers and 200 meters in altitude. So I could take my time to explore the small villages along the way. Dolceaqua was the first gem, just behind Ventimiglia. Like out of time, the centuries-old old town clung to the slope below a fortress, traversed by a maze of narrow, shady cobblestone streets. Perfectly adapted to the climatic conditions, it stays pleasantly cool here even under the scorching midday sun.

Almost equally impressive was Isolabona, which was located on an island in the river, and then my daily destination, Pigna. Fortunately, not too many tourists seemed to get lost in this corner of Liguria, so I was mostly alone on my exploration tour, apart from a few locals. In the evening, the village slowly came to life, and in front of the pizzeria where I had booked a guest room for a few euros for two days, lively discussions about God and the world began over enough coffee and wine. Just a few kilometers from the sea, I had landed in a completely different world, which had nothing in common with the mass tourism of Ventimiglia.