The monorail. No seat belts on this speedster!
The Cinque Terre region offers ideal climate conditions for two of Italy’s most cherished exports – olives and wine. Unfortunately, this ideal climate is coupled with mountain goat-crippling, steep slopes. Over the centuries farmers of Cinque Terre terraced the slopes using stones pulled from the hillside. The olive groves and vineyards that now populate the slopes have been in production for centuries.
Vineyards rising above Monterosso. The stone wall in the upper left supports the winding road coming down to Montorosso.
In many places the terrace slopes exceed 50 degrees. You can imagine the difficulty of planting, let alone harvesting, grapes and olives. To harvest olives growers often tie lifeline harnesses to the trees to secure their footing. As the crop is harvested the fruit is placed into large baskets. Traditionally, those baskets would then be carried (downhill, I hope) to the olive mill or the winery. It was, and still is, very labor intensive.
The vineyards above Vernazza. Notice the foot trails for bringing the harvest down to the village.
Another view of Vernazza’s vineyards and olive groves.
In the 1980’s the more prosperous producers came up with a better plan. They built a small monorail capable of negotiating the 50 degree slopes. While grapes and olives are still harvested by hand and placed into baskets the baskets are then carried a short distance to the monorail. The monorail serves as the final link between the vineyard or grove and the production facility.
Heading off into space. The carts are clamped on to the rail.
This monorail pulled 5 carts.
In Vernazza Betty and I hiked to the top of the village to get an overview of the village below. We happened upon an idle monorail parked at the top of the village. Its single rail stretched out toward the olive groves to the north passing over a chasm of some 50+ feet only 100 feet into it’s journey. There is no way that an acrophobe could operate the monorail. It made me queasy just thinking about the ride over the chasm. But I do want to go back to Cinque Terre during the fall harvest season just to watch – and possibly to sample last year’s harvest.
Detail of rail bracket showing the cogs along the bottom side of the rail.