Cinque Terre

It was a long, hot day today. About 30°c on the west coast, where I explored the Cinque Terre; a string of five colourful little towns tucked into the hillsides along the edge of the Tyrrhenian Sea. The roads are pretty unique here. Lots of tight bends and hairpins on perilous cliff-roads. Add lunatic Italian drivers and horrendous tarmac into the equation and you’ve got an exhausting ride, where you cannot let your concentration lapse for a second.

There are five towns in total (more if you include the not-so-spectacular ones) but I only had time to do four: Riomaggiore, Manarola (main photo), Coniglia and Vernazza. They’re all very similar, but each has its own particular flavour.

Riomaggiore has an amazing harbour, but it’s packed with tourists - the busiest of the four. Manarola is the most spectacular looking, and the most photogenic - my favourite. Vernazza was quite chilled and there weren’t many tourists, but wasn’t nearly as jaw-dropping. Corniglia was a town.

A word of warning to fellow motorcyclists: be careful where you park your bike in these towns. The local Bizzies are very strict about parking outside of allocated bays. I parked the Bonneville illegally outside of a Police station, which would have been bad enough if I hadn't tucked it between two Police bikes.

To be fair, they had no official livery on them, and I didn’t find out until after I'd paid my fine, and the two Poliziotto who’d pulled me rode off on them.

These photographs were taken with my Canon EOS 5D Mark IV and the extraordinary Canon 35 mm f/1.4 L II USM .