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Hiking in Monte Cucco

Monte Cucco: hiking from Costacciaro, discovering the park

Monte Cucco offers numerous trails dedicated to hiking of various levels of difficulty. Umbria offers the ideal backdrop, allowing you to immerse yourself nature and fully appreciate all of the sensations it will award you.   Sentiero 24 – a trail which connects the village of Costacciaro to Monte Cucco, covering the old road – is also called ‘ L'uomo e la montagna', (Man and mountain) precisely to underline this special connection which can be established by undertaking this trail.   Before deciding to embark on this walk, you should know that the route we are about to describe has difficulty level E (Excursionist) it takes about 4 hours to complete and covers a total distance of about 6.5 km, both starting and ending in Costacciaro. We advise you to take plenty of water with you, and you can also find it in the area near Pian delle Macinare. The Parco del Monte Cucco is a truly captivating protected area, rich in vegetation and water ways, marked by typically karstic features which reveal its origins. Over the course of history, it was also a destination for those seeking a monastic or hermitic life. Are you ready for our hiking trail? From the village of Costacciaro, take the road which leads up to Pian delle Macinare and about 200 metres after the last group of houses, turn left for Sentiero n.24 just before the bridge. Until a few decades ago, it was the only means of access to the mountain: this trail goes along the upper edge of an abandoned quarry and leads to the woods. You will notice the sedimentary stratifications of Scaglia Rossa limestone and the famed Buca di Mazzapane, a particular karst feature which goes down for more than 40 metres, getting wider as it goes down, with a sharp drop.   Here the path is still quite wide and comfortable and as you continue and enter the wood, you will observe that Scaglia Bianca limestone has taken the place of the Scaglia Rossa one. The road gradually becomes winding and steep, leading you to the rocky pallet of Beato Tommaso (the Patron Saint of Costacciaro). After the woods, the trail crosses rocky peaks and passes under a monolith known as ‘ Il Sasso' i.e. ‘The Boulder'. This itinerary represents a perfect fusion of the continuous evolution of nature – which over time created hidden caves, developed wild vegetation – and the history of man, which contributed to designing the territory by building trails and ways through the rocks. To return from the mountain back to the town of Costacciaro, you will have to do the same route in reverse. After all your efforts, you can reward yourself with a rest and a meal in one of the restaurants in the area offering meat-based dishes, cheese, black and white truffle, dried-cured meats, legumes and much more besides.
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