"A week of walking around Greve in Chianti", a guidebook

The guidebook we used 10 years ago

The first two times my wife and I came to Chianti to go walking (2001 and 2009), we brought the best guidebook we could find - Walking and Eating in Tuscany and Umbria by James Lasdun and Pia Davis. We call it "WETU".

Has problems but still recommended

WETU has good general travel information and describes 29 walks in Tuscany and Umbria. If you want to go walking in that part of Italy, you should buy it because there's nothing else like it. However, the latest version (2004) is getting old and its maps are small scale line drawings (see comparisons below). On our first trips to Chianti we stayed in Radda and Greve and used it but we had some difficulty following the directions. Also, like most guidebooks, the walks in WETU are widely dispersed and therefore are not conducive to an extended walking holiday unless you have a car.

A map from WETU showing the one walk that connects with Greve
Scale on page is about 1:400,000

When we're on holiday, my wife and I like to rent an apartment for a week or two and go walking every day. For us, having a home base for a while and not using a car is the most relaxing kind of holiday and it allows us to get to know an area. Greve is one of our favourite places but the WETU guidebook has only one walk that starts or finishes there. By the time we'd made three trips to Greve, we had found lots of great walks that we could access on foot. I described our method of finding walks here:
https://iberianpixels.blogspot.com/2015/11/our-customized-walks-in-tuscany.html

After our walking experience around Greve, I jokingly said that I should write a guidebook. The idea simmered for a while, I turned it into a project, and finished it this spring. It's available as a PDF file at https://www.walkintuscany.ca for $15 (Canadian).

The guidebook I wish we had 10 years ago

Some special things about my guide:

• All of the walks are around the town of Greve so it's perfect for an extended stay there.
• The included maps have a very large scale (about 1:12,000 when printed). 
• The zip download includes GPS track files for all the routes so you can navigate on your dedicated GPS device or smartphone, with a suitable app.

Here's an overview of the walks.  Greve is at the centre.

Eight walks from 7 to 19 km.

My guidebook includes text descriptions and large scale maps of each walk. You can print whichever pages you want. If you know how to use a recreational GPS (e.g. a Garmin handheld or an appropriate app on your phone) you'll have an even better way to navigate the routes because you have the tracks as GPX files.

The routes in my guide do not follow dedicated recreational trails but rather a combination of quiet paved roads, gravel roads, four wheel drive roads, farm tracks, and foot trails. There are unmarked junctions where you have to pay attention to the maps and directions. Adventurous walkers who like to explore will actually find this an advantage but it makes good maps essential. That's where the maps in my guide (and the GPS option) really stands out. Here's a comparison of a map in WETU and a map of the same route in my guide.

Part of a map from WETU (upper left corner of the page shown above). 

Part of a map of the same route from my guide. 

I don't want to be too critical but my maps are much better than those in WETU. Even more dramatic is the exceptional quality of maps that are available if you purchase the GPS app that I use on my iPhone. It's called MotionX GPS and it's only $1.99 US. I have no connection with it other than being a user. It's a bit quirky but the downloadable maps that can be used offline are awesome! Here's a picture of my iPhone screen showing the same area as that in the two previous examples. The red line is one of my GPX files and the background is the downloaded MotionX terrain map.

To emphasize the amount of detail that's available on these maps, here's one more screenshot of MotionX after zooming in to the switchbacks around the Greve Cemetery (left of centre in the above image). The track is turned off to show the underlying map. 

Greve is a beautiful town with all the shops and restaurants we could ask for. It has an excellent weekly market in the piazza and wineries and agritourism establishments within walking distance.

I'd like to end on a positive note about WETU, by Lasdun and Davis. You should get it even if only  for their good writing about history, geography, food, and practical information about Tuscany and Umbria. However, if you want to do any walking around Greve, I'd also recommend my guidebook!

Montefioralle in autumn, an easy 30 minute walk from Greve