The Riviera dei Fiori

Between Ventimiglia and Cervo winter does not really happen: the January average sits around ten degrees, palms grow outdoors and lemons ripen. From the mid-nineteenth century the English, Germans and Russians built villas and gardens here, and the name of the riviera comes from flower growing, which for a century was its main industry.

For campers it is the easiest part of Liguria: the coast is less steep, the beaches are sand and the sites have real pitches rather than three-metre terraces. It is also the area that stays open longest, because the season starts earlier and ends later.

What there is to see

Sanremo has its art nouveau casino, the flower market and the cycle path built on the old railway, twenty-four kilometres above the sea without a single climb. Bordighera has its palm-lined promenade and its upper town. Cervo, hanging above its beach with the baroque church at the top, is one of the finest villages on the coast. At Ventimiglia the Hanbury gardens gather plants from all over the world on a headland.

Behind, the valleys climb towards France within a few dozen kilometres, and in an hour you go from swimming to a thousand metres above sea level.