Middle-aged flash packers

I’d been looking forward to exploring this area. Conero is a hilly peninsula to the south of Ancona and consists of woodlands on the top, plunging white cliffs and white pebbly/sand beaches. The marketing blurb describes it as the “Pearl of the Adriatic”.

The lady in the tourist information centre in Sirolo was extremely helpful and sold us a map with the trails you can walk around the peninsula. We chose to do 2 trails and interspersed them with a lunch stop.

The first trail was nice but not exactly bursting with views. Still, it was pleasant enough.

Fortified by lunch, we set off on the second trail, supposedly providing wonderful views of the two sisters – two chalk/rock pillars by a beautiful bay. If you are 8ft tall, I’m sure it’s a wonderful sight but even for Steve to see it, he had to balance precariously on the metal barrier protecting you from certain death in order to see anything at all.

We decided to press on and try and get a better view. We stopped off at the Grotte Mortarolo, a cave where people used to go and meditate apparently, then carried on down the trail. After slipping and sliding on the shiny rock with only the occasional tree root and rope to cling on to, we decided it was too dangerous to carry on and retraced our steps. Disappointing and it’s not often we give up on something but a twisted ankle or worse wasn’t appealing.

Next, the beach. We decided to go to the nearest one to us as we couldn’t be bothered to drive miles and then take another slippery path to get to a beach. We settled on Sirolo beach which was only 15 minutes away. Three car parks later and we eventually found somewhere with spaces. This was getting tiresome. It felt as though everything we tried to do either wasn’t worth doing or we were unable to do it.

The walk to the sea was 15 minutes of quite steep descent – no wonder the car parks nearer the beach were full. Must be a nightmare trying to get kids and all the necessary paraphernalia down there – and then you’ve got to get back up again! You would think the beach would be empty – not a bit of it! Even at 4pm, plenty of people arriving and filling what little space there was.

We did enjoy a refreshing swim though and had a little snooze. We needed it: the route up put us through our paces.

So that was our foray into the Conero Riviera. I’m sure there’s more to see but I really don’t know if I can be bothered. Is road trip lethargy setting in? We’ll see tomorrow when we visit the Furlo Gorge. Or maybe we’ll just stay in bed.