Log book

Mattia and Syusy reach the island of Bergeggi, recently placed under protection, as Syusy reminds us, which in a short time has already borne fruits.

To Bergeggi you cannot get out of the boat, but its beauty is undeniable. Marco Colman, a scuba diver, tells us how beautiful it is to go around it and, above all, to see it underwater in a dive. In this connection, since it was made a marine park, it has been repopulated and the fish have re-colonised the whole coast of the island which, because of the beauty of the seabed, has become a favourite destination for all scuba divers coming to Liguria to dive. The immersion points are marked by two buoys: Pifferaio and Canalone.

Bergeggi is a fine example of how to promote tourism, says Syusy, and Marco agrees, stressing that valorisation of the environmental heritage can stimulate tourism and, more precisely in this case, sport and scuba diving. And it seems to work, seeing the number of scuba divers that even in October come to visit the area.

On the subject of sport, Syusy meets Marco Tommasini aka Thomas, a free climber or – as he specifies – one of the official “stud placers” of Finale Ligure. Under a wall with studs in it, so that everyone can climb it, Thomas explains its name: it’s called Nolitudine, a play on words between “Noli”, rentals, and “Solitudine”, loneliness.

Actually it cannot only be climbed vertically, but also horizontally. For instance there is a path 400 metres long whose name in Genoese dialect means “on the foaming of the sea.”

Marco also tells us that Finale Ligure has been very well known at a European level for sporting climbs for over 40 years, because it has particularly solid rock and many itineraries and it is climbable all year round, both in summer and in winter.

The typical rock of Finale is called, not by chance, stone of the end, formed by bits of shells and colonial corals. Like the Dolomites.

The Finale climb is typically a “finger” one, it is the fingers and the tendons that have to be trained. You climb with just one finger – Syusy notes – just like Spiderman!