Elba’s most famous visitor stayed on the island for roughly one year. He left, eventually (although he always emphasized how much he had enjoyed the experience), in search for a better job on the mainland.
This did, in the end, not turn out very well for him (he lost his new job after a probation period of 100 days) or for the 40,000 of his employees who lost their lives at Waterloo, but that is another story.
In the 200 years that have since passed, Elba has developed from a peaceful rural idyll to a much busier rural idyll, at least during the summer.
What has not changed is that there is still a lot for visitors to enjoy about the experience: crystal-clear waters and lush green mountainsides …
… as well as magnificently picturesque hilltop villages.
Elba is a great place for active summer holiday makers, but a true paradise for easy hikers, especially for those who like their hikes easy.
Many easy hikes in Elba criss-cross the island, more than anybody can complete in a single visit. There are several strategies for coping with such an abundance of riches.
We decided to do so by concentrating on the trails near our base, the Hotel Ilio in Sant’Andrea in the northwest of the island, starting with the approx. 7 km long walk to Mariana Marina, which takes 2 to 3 hours to complete if you take it easy (and why shouldn’t you?)
On the map, this looks very much like a coastal walk, but actually, you only get to see much of the coast in the first 30 minutes …
… and once you reach this bay (at roughly the half-way mark) …
… you will be entering a stretch of dense forest, denser and more lush than anything you may have expected to encounter along the rim of the supposedly semi-arid Mediterranean basin.
But while much of the Mediterranean may be semi-arid indeed, Elba is not: the Mediterranean Sea’s “Emerald Isle” gets more rain (about 700 mm or 27 inches a year) than London or Paris. The density of the forest vegetation, meanwhile, is also due to Elba’s status as a National Park and nature reserve.
This ensures that any human conservation work must be performed with a light hand. Hence the rugged charm of the island’s trails.
Traces of agricultural toil can still be detected in the island’s forests, but these physical remnants have long been overgrown.
Stumbling upon them feels like finding prehistorical tools or dinosaur bones, although this farm building, a former olive press, may – at a rough guess – be little more than 100 years old.
It certainly belongs to a previous and largely forgotten period: one where Elba’s inhabitants had to work even harder for their survival than today’s taxi drivers and restaurant waitresses.
The experience of discovering a former farmhouse in the middle of this wilderness reminded me of Charlton Heston’s astronaut who discovers to his horror that – spoiler alert! – the “Planet of the Apes” where he has crash-landed his spaceship is in fact Planet Earth.
Elba could stand in as the scenery for an updated remake of this classic: “The Planet of the Plants”.
Once you leave the dense forest around the bay, the gentle descent into Marciana Marina begins, and you will get unobstructed views of the surrounding hilltop villages on one side …
… and the Mediterranean Sea on the other …
… before you reach the coastal resort of Marciana Marina where you have a choice of several restaurants for some refreshment and from where you can catch a bus back to your base.
Before our departure, we had read some very discouraging comments about Elba’s local transport system but, on arrival, found this system to be actually quite good and reliable.
Beware, of course: Elba is not Rome or Milan where, if you miss one bus, another one very much like that will come around in less than 10 minutes.
You must look up your route in advance (only the final destination is indicated on the buses themselves), identify the exact location of the bus stops and study the schedule so you don’t fall into a hole of several hours or miss the day’s last bus.
But, on the key routes, the buses do circulate roughly once an hour, which is not bad by standards of the Italian countryside (or any other rural bits of Europe).
All of the easy hikes in the Arcipelago Toscano National Park (which includes Elba and its neighbouring, smaller islands) are numbered (today’s walk is listed as no. 13 or 113 on some maps) and well-marked.
The trailhead is located behind the parking lot at the Hotel Oleandre about one mile from our base in Sant’Andrea, so we used a “feeder path“ to get there which starts just outside Sant’Andrea’s small Tourism Office and continues past a hotel swimming pool (yes: just keep on straight) and behind suburban back gardens.
This feeder path is much less well marked. Markers do appear, occasionally, but are conspicuously absent when you need them most: when the road forks or you are beginning to wonder for whatever reason where this is all leading you.
It is best to see this as part of the fun: losing your way at least once belongs to the adventure of hiking in Italy like the sunshine and the bowl of pasta that awaits you at the destination.
Use your common sense, and you will get there in the end. Until then, just enjoy the sunshine and the views: there is always plenty of both.
We do hope to see you next week for more of our easy hikes in Elba. (It gets even better!)
Plan that trip now and get on these easy hikes in Elba!
We highly recommend a stay in Boutique Hotel Ilio, mainly to discover at least two of the easy hikes in Elba. The hotel’s manager, Maurizio Testa, can offer tips and help in planning your hikes, including very reliable recommendations as to where to eat at the end of the trails.
