Lunch on day two was a more modest affair, a fresh salad caprese (mozzarella, vine-ripened tomatoes and basil leaves) in World Heritage town Portovenere. A medieval fort and church dominated the skyline, pastel-coloured houses jammed the shoreline and fishermen sold their morning catch from old boats that jostled beside luxury yachts.

This was the gateway to Cinque Terre, and it’s where we began the serious walking of the tour.

Five hour’s wander along a coastal ridge, enjoying views across the Ligurian Sea, fragrances of wild herbs, two café stops and one magnificent sunset, brought us to Riomaggiore, the first of the five villages of Cinque Terre. Marina walked with us, while Anthony and the luggage-filled van headed for our hotel, though staying within cell phone reach should anyone feel the need for a shorter walk.

Tourist Mecca Cinque Terre is hardly the remote region favoured by Anthony and Marina, but really it’s just too special to miss. To compromise, they accommodated us in a quaint hotel in middle village Corniglia, which sits high on a cliff top and is thus bypassed by the hordes that flock to the other, bigger villages.

The hotel is also where the local mafia eats, whispered Marina and I wasn’t sure if she was joking, as we settled among colourful looking characters in the busy ristorante.

Our trip notes listed vermentino (white wine), focaccia (bread), pesto with gnocchi and seafood as prime Cinque Terre fare. Sure enough this was what the menu featured; ravioli with octopus, pasta with clams, risotto di pesce (fish), grilled swordfish and fresh anchovies, netted each night by Cinque Terre fishermen who haul their boats by day high up to the narrow village streets because there is little safe mooring along this coast.

For centuries, the economy of the steep, rocky Cinque Terre relied on fishing and terraced vineyards and olive groves, with ancient paved pathways the only means of travelling from village to village. Tourist interest in the 1920s saw the building of a coastal railway. More recently a road was carved higher up the hillsides and car parks built on the village outskirts.

It was harvest time when we visited, and as we walked the popular Cinque Terre trail from village to village we watched the handpicking harvesters, and the tiny, diesel-driven funiculars that carried grape-laden bins up the steep terraced hillsides.

It was a different world, down in the villages, where hordes of gelato-licking tourists, delivered by ferries from Portovenere, poured into the souvenir shops and cafes. We joined them briefly in Vernazza, for espresso. As the day wore on the trail also became crowded – and very narrow in parts– leading to some interesting encounters as different nationalities, ages and sizes manoeuvred past in opposite directions.

Anthony met us at Monterosso, the fifth village, and led us through hidden back alleys o the Enoteca Internazionale, the oldest wine shop in the Cinque Terre, for a lunch of salad, focaccia and a refreshing little vermentino.

We took the easy way home, joining the ferry-travelling tourists back along the coast to village number one, Riomaggiore, wandered the gentle coastal “Lover’s Walk”, through Manarola village with its narrow paved, boat-lined streets, then climbed up the cliff and away from the crowds to our own, Corniglia.

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