|
A few minutes later I reached Levanto, sort of the gateway to the famous Cinque Terre, a beautiful seaside town itself and – most important – one of the few places in the area that offers a large enough beach to find surf-able waves. Due to off-season I had no problem driving into the old town and finding a parking lot large enough for my van and not too far from the coast.
I walked through the historic part of the town and soon reached the seaside promenade. The first glimpse of the sea showed that it was onshore but the waves were pretty massive (at least for the Mediterranean Sea). The western part of the beach had un-surfable closeouts but the break at the centre offered the odd open right wall whereas the left at the east sides sometimes had smaller lefts. Still it was pretty unruly and like so often in the tide-less Med, the sandbanks mostly created closeouts.
But the scenery was amazing with all the mountains and cliffs and that typical Italian town and – as an old woman told me while passing by – the mountains of Corsica clearly visible out at sea. I had realized them before but did not know that this island is that clearly visible from the mainland.
I decided to walk up the hills at the eastern side of the bay to get more vistas and entered a park-like area with old trees, a staircase leading up the steep hills flanked by paths at both sides and a castle-like building on one side.
continue >>>
|
