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There is some fantastic walking to do, up through charming hilltop villages such as Cardoso, Verni, Trassillico and Vergemoli; where the red tiled roofed houses huddle the steep hillsides defensively. You will discover simple, homely accommodations on our route – you will probably be the only tourists in some of the places you pass through. Their owners prepare your dinners in the mountains using traditional recipes and styles, and will make up packed lunches for a few extra Euros.
There follows a couple of tough mountain days into these peaks, which in reasonable weather make fantastic mountain itineraries. The tour around Monte Forato 1209m, takes you up a forested river valley and up on a high roller coaster ridge dipping in and out of the woods until you arrive at a natural stone arch which can be seen way across in Barga. Twice a year the Sun rises and sets through the arch on each side resulting in a double flash phenomenon that makes the villagers congregate for the occasion, as long as that its not cloudy, or someone hasn’t covered the hole as they did one year! The stone bridge over the 30 metre hole can, with care, be scrambled over, leading directly to the final incline up to Monte Forato, but for most people it will be a bridge too far and it will be enough to stroll beside the aperture before finding the main path to the peak.
It is a long hike down and along via the beautiful villages of Vergemoli and Calomini to a hermitage, where you spend a night below the cliff walls bursting with springs.
The final day walks out past Gallicano with is Romanesque church and Neo-Gothic Aqueduct and then back to Fornaci, from where after a great gelato at the new gelateri, you can spend the afternoon following a quiet trail up to Beautiful Barga, a walled Medieval town with a prominent ‘Duomo’ (collegiate church) on its central hill. From here virtually the whole week’s route is spread out before you, including most of the villages, Monte Forato and Pania della Croce! Tour Information: The
Apuane Alps We Want To Hear Your Views!
The Sherpa Expeditions Team |
During
mediaeval times the Florentines who exerted control over Barga, did not
care too much for the high Apuane peaks and gorges which were considered
remote and backward. The denizens of these alps, subsisted in the forests
on chestnuts, and a few crops grown on ancient terraces, made charcoal in
the forests and tickled a few trout in the streams. The industrial
revolution and two World Wars saw the population melt away into the
valleys, and more particularly to work the metal smelters of Fornaci de
Barga from where the walk commences.
As
soon as you start to follow trails that thread high into the chestnut and
beech forests, you discover signs of ancient land use, flattened areas
once used for charcoal production, shrines and chapels, ‘Metatos’ –
chestnut drying and storage sheds, pollarded trees and crumbling
terracing. The forest area has a propensity to wrestle and recover what
Man has taken from it, if left to its own devices, but most of the trails
are freshly blazed with red and white waymarks and much clearer than the
first time I visited ten years ago.
There
are beautiful little hamlets such as San Luigi with its spring and chapel,
high above the cliffs overlooking Fornaci. The ideal place for a picnic,
with its field’s dotted with orchids in April. Then there is San
Pellegrinetto, from whose church the highlights of the walk can be seen
getting into the high Apuanes above the riverside village of Fornovolasco.
The
second big walk tackles the peak that dwarfs Forato: this is Pania della
Croce: over 1800 metres of Alpine type walking above a beautiful Beech
Forest whose leaves throughout the year, form a cushioning carpet along
the woodland trails. It is a steep but manageable rocky ascent to the
summit ridge from where you will get beautiful views into the Marble
excavating region of Tuscany; Versilia and all the way down to the
Mediterranean coast and perhaps to Elba and Corsica on an exceptionally
clear day!
The
long day is made more manageable by having a ‘rest day’ of sorts where
you can visit the inside of the mountains at ‘Grotto del Vento’- The
cave of the winds, which are created by the heat differential existing
within and without the caves. This is one place on the Apuanes that can be
busy at peak times, but the rock formations are impressive.