Alassio - Madonna della Guardia

The start of the trail begins between two dry-stone walls, to the right of the square opposite Alassio’s cemetery (where Via Gastaldi and Via Michelangelo meet). The trail climbs uphill, passing several villas and greenhouses on the right and walls and olive branches on the left. After  a moderately level stretch of road, at the end of which you come across the Molino Ibiza building, the path leads into the private Valbona road.
100 metres down the tarmac road, there is a point where the road continues to the right, and the path bends to the left, climbing gently for another hundred metres. After intersecting a dirt road, the hamlet of  Moglio’s cemetery lines the route, which then arrives at the Alassio-Testico country road, next to the San Sebastiano church.
From the churchyard, you take a right away from the church, going back up Via Tonnarotti until you come out onto Piazza di Moglio. Once you have passed the bar-tabacchi shop, a paved mule track crosses the whole village up until the square marking the “top” of Moglio. To the left of the restaurant, the trail climbs again, paved for a brief stretch and sloping steeply as before. It then once again intersects the country road towards Testico. The trail, now a clay road, arrives at the over-looking “Colletto di Moglio”. To the right of the crossroads, the trail starts to climb with sharp hairpin bends to the top of Mount Tirasso (587 MASL).
From the square, there is magnificent view over the Baia del Sole, from Capo Mele up to the Cappelletta (chapel), of the inhabited hilltop of Moglio and the tiny hamlet of Vegliasco, near to which stands the Tower of Adelasia, the legendary founding stone of Alassio.
From the other side, the Lerrone valley dominates the view, including the villages of Villanova and Garlenda.