Amalfi without the bus

The Amalfi coast road is one of the great drives in Europe and we would like you never to take it, at least not between ten in the morning and five in the afternoon between June and September.

It is one lane in each direction, carved into a cliff, and it carries every coach, every hire car, every scooter and every delivery van on the coast. In summer the SITA bus can take ninety minutes to cover the twelve kilometres from Amalfi to Positano. You can walk it faster. People do.

What we do

Boats. There is a ferry between every town on the coast and it is the best seat in the house. Positano from the water is the picture you came for; Positano from the road is the back of a coach. We move by boat wherever there is one.

Feet. The Path of the Gods runs high above the coast from Bomerano to Nocelle, and it is, without exaggeration, the finest walk of its length in Italy. Four hours if you stop for the views, which you will. It ends with 1,700 steps down into Positano and an ice cream you have earned.

One early start. On the fourth day we leave at six-thirty for Ravello, and we are on the terrace of the Villa Cimbrone before the first coach parks. By the time it does, we are in the gardens with the place almost to ourselves, and by lunch we are back on the water.

What we skip

Capri. Not because it is not beautiful — it is — but because in July the island receives twenty thousand day-trippers before noon, and there is nowhere to stand. We go to Ischia's thermal gardens instead, and nobody has ever asked for their Capri back.

The whole slow week is The Amalfi Coast, Slowly. Seven days, one coach journey, and that one is at seven in the morning.