This guide is a contribution from G.R. Horn, one of our guests, who has contributed, to make also your stay a pleasant experience.
Campi – Righi (Genova)
This walk is the easiest of them all and the one closest to Genova itself. The walk itself takes no more than two hours, and it only entails one train ride in total. For the start of this walk, take the Genova – Casella train (see Walk No. 2) and hop off at Campi. Take the gravel road leading back in the direction the train just came from. After a hundred yards this track will feed into a paved road. Follow this road in the direction you have been walking in. After another hundred yards, the road makes a near 180 degree turn to the left. In about another hundred yards the road, which has been climbing, reaches the pass. Here you need to turn right on a gravel road. On some days, a small restaurant / snack bar is open on your immediate left as you begin to walk on the gravel path.
From now on you will essentially go straight ahead on this gently winding path which, for at least one hour, proceeds at a smooth and level altitude. Views of the Valbisagno and the hillsides and mountains to the east are a constant feature of this path. Eventually you will begin to reach the outskirts of the system of fortifications characteristic of the Righi portion of Genova just above the city center to the north. This path is neither a section of the Alta Via nor the E 1. Instead, at one point, the insurance group Alleanza, which has sponsored local hiking paths, sponsored the installation of some solid markings, including wood-panelled signposts, all of them in the inevitable red-and-white color scheme of long distance paths in southern Europe. The system has not been updated for a long time, or so it seems, and you will not be able completely to rely on them. Nonetheless, some such signposts survive at oftentimes crucial path-crossings, and you should be on the lookout for the Alleanza signs. For, soon after you encounter the first of many long walls belonging to the fortification system mentioned above, the trail veers off the main track and bypasses the fortifications, usually just below the easternmost set of walls, until the Righi funicular. It is probably best to take the funicular into town from here, as the remainder of the trail is completely devoid of signposts, and it mostly leads along fairly well-travelled roads past the Genova – Casella train station and then into the city center where it ends on the Old Port.
HAPPY TRAILS!