href="#uee084d9e-15b4-59e3-9c11-5ef3c8854a6c">The GEA
Stage 1 Bocca Trabaria to Passo di Viamaggio
Stage 2 Passo di Viamaggio to Caprese Michelangelo
Stage 3 Caprese Michelangelo to La Verna
Stage 4 La Verna to Badia Prataglia
Stage 5 Badia Prataglia to Rifugio Città di Forlì
Stage 6 Rifugio Città di Forlì to Passo del Muraglione
Stage 7 Passo del Muraglione to Colla di Casaglia
Stage 8 Colla di Casaglia to Badia Moscheta
Stage 9 Badia Moscheta to Passo del Giogo
Stage 10 Passo del Giogo to Passo della Futa
Stage 11 Passo della Futa to Montepiano
Stage 12 Montepiano to Rifugio Pacini
Stage 13 Rifugio Pacini to Pracchia
Stage 14 Pracchia to Lago Scaffaiolo
Stage 15 Lago Scaffaiolo to Boscolungo
Stage 16 Boscolungo to Lago Santo Modenese
Stage 17 Lago Santo Modenese to Passo delle Radici
Stage 18 Passo delle Radici to Passo di Pradarena
Stage 19 Passo di Pradarena to Passo del Cerreto
Stage 20 Passo del Cerreto to Prato Spilla
Stage 21 Prato Spilla to Lago Santo Parmense
Stage 22 Lago Santo Parmense to Passo della Cisa
Stage 23 Passo della Cisa to Passo Due Santi
Appendix A Route summary table
Appendix B Italian–English glossary
Appendix C Useful contacts
Appendix D Background reading
On the way up to Colle Bruciata (Stage 17)
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
Between Colla di Casaglia and Badia Moscheta (Stage 7)
After 10 years away from the Apennine mountains, it was with great pleasure – and relief – that I discovered very little has changed on this memorable trek. Long rambles in solitude are still the flavour of the day, while a steady trickle of pilgrims on the Franciscan trails are now found in the trek’s southern parts. The forests are still vast and magical, the village inhabitants as friendly as ever and the meals thankfully mouth-wateringly delicious. The few notable differences – changes for the better – are the hugely improved waymarking and the places where the GEA has been rerouted to take in more superbly scenic ridges and summits.
Gillian Price, 2015
En route to Poggio Scali (Stage 5)
INTRODUCTION
Your peaks are beautiful, ye Apennines!
In the soft light of these serenest skies;
From the broad highland region, black with pines,
Fair as the hills of Paradise they rise.
To the Apennines, William Cullen Bryant, 1835
The mountainous Apennines, without a doubt, are Italy’s best-kept secret. Forming the rugged spine of the slender Italian peninsula, they seem to provide support as it ventures out into the Mediterranean. For walkers this glorious elongated range provides thousands of kilometres of marked walking trails over stunning panoramic ridges and stupendous forested valleys, touching on quiet rural communities little affected by mass tourism. Dotted throughout are historic sanctuaries, hospitable mountain inns, national parks and nature reserves home to wildlife and marvellous wildflowers, incredible roads and passes that testify to feats of engineering, and stark memorials to the terrible events of World War II.
The Apennines
The Apennine chain runs along the entire length of Italy and clocks up some 1400km from the link with the Alps close to the French border, all the way south to the Straits of Messina, even extending over to Sicily. The highest peak is the 2912m Corno Grande in Italy’s southern Abruzzo region. As a formidable barrier that splits the country in two lengthways, the range has witnessed centuries of wars and skirmishes, alternating with the passage of traders, pilgrims and daring bandits.
Heading towards Libro Aperto (Stage 15)
The rock is, by and large, sedimentary in nature – sandstone, shale and some limestone – deposited in an ancient sea during the Mesozoic era (245–66 million years ago). The mountains were formed immediately after their neighbours, the Alps, when – some 66 million years ago, and climaxing around two million years BCE – remnants of the African plate were forced together and squeezed upwards, little by little.
Both volcanic and seismic activity shaped the Apennines, though ancient ice masses also played a part. Tell-tale clues are sheltered cirques like giant armchairs, once filled by ice from a glacier tongue and nowadays more often than not home to a lake or tarn. The present aspect of the Apennines – steep, rough western flanks overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea, in contrast to the relatively gentler slopes on the eastern Adriatic side – is due mainly to recent erosion by water.
Evidence has been unearthed of man’s presence since prehistoric times, some 7000 years ago. The northern Apennines were then the stronghold of the ancient Liguri or Ligurian people (as the colonising Romans found out to their detriment over the 150 years it took to get the fierce tribes to accept domination). We are probably indebted to them for the very name Apennines: the root ‘penn’ (for an isolated peak) is found throughout Italy. In another version Pennine was a divinity believed to reside on the inhospitable summits, while a further interpretation attributes the name to King Api, last of the Italic gods.
Over time well-trodden paths conveyed waves of passers-by, such as devotees on the Via Francigena which led from Canterbury to Rome. For the great medieval poet Dante Alighieri, the Apennines were a source of inspiration for ‘The Divine Comedy’; the same holds true for Petrarch
