SENTIERO DEL PELLEGRINO (Trail) – GROTTA DEI FALSARI (Cave)

ITINERARY: VARIGOTTI – TRAIL DEL PELLEGRINO – SEMAFORO (CAPE OF NOLI) – GROTTA DEI BRIGANTI (CAVE) – VARIGOTTI

By car (from Finale Ligure’s train station FF SS): you take the national road Aurelia (Strada Statale 1) towards Varigotti (direction: Savona). Go through Varigotti for about 1 Km and park your car in the big parking area next to the street “Strada Vecchia”.

Duration: 3 h 30 min         Length: 8    Km          Elevation gain: 203 m

Trail mark: red X (X)

The trail is well signaled and goes uphill. Some stretches might result a bit demanding.

The trail goes up for 350 m, offering a beautiful view over the coastline, to run into a large crossroad. 

Turn left to follow the trail mark. (The trail that goes down on your right hand side, leads to the church of “San Lorenzo” in 150 m).

On the main trail, you are going to bump into a colorful wall called “Mausoleo Cerisola”, built in the seventies by Giuseppe Cerisola after his experience in Australia, before as a war prisoner, and then as a worker. After that, the trail crosses the always dried stream “Rio Bordella”. The main trails reaches two beautiful viewpoints over the coastline, abandoning the trail for some meters, in the proximity of the rock’s peaks. After that, you are going to arrive to a fork, where you will have to continue on the right hand side (this stretch is signaled as “Via Dantesca”). Then,  the trail leads to another important point, the sighting tower known as “Torre delle Streghe”: take the deviation that goes down the hill on your right hand side to reach the tower in about 30 m. Back to the main trail, it now passes across  a wooded area 250 m long and then it joins a larger unpaved road that leads to the peak where the “Semaforo” rises. (turn right and go on for 100 m). The trail mark changes now.

Trail mark: red circle sided by, sometimes, a yellow mark

The trail is wide and easily walkable. It mostly goes downhill.

From the “Semaforo”, you have to turn left and go down the hill (this stretch is about 1,2km long).

After the first 100 m, you are going to reach a fork: turn right and then right again some meters afterwards.

Turn right again at the next fork (after 550 m)  and follow the new trail mark.

Trail mark: red ball

This last stretch goes steeply down and leads to the cave of the counterfeiters “Grotta dei Briganti” also known as “Grotta dei Falsari”. The panorama is very suggestive and emotional.

Turn around and follow back your steps to get back to the starting point and the car.

(Come scaricare tracce GPS).

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