The enchanted woods
From Serrara to Fontana: the enchanted woods
Duration: about 4 hours
Difficulty: E/EE
Difference in height: 300 m
Downhill altitude difference: 260 m
Maximum altitude: 789 m
Length of the route: 6 km
Departure: Serrara (near the Bracconiere restaurant) at 09.00
Arrival: Fountain (main square)
Route: Serrara, Bosco dei Frassitelli, Bosco della Falanga (Stone Houses), Punta San Nicola (Monte Epomeo), Fontana
Equipment: mandatory hiking shoes and layered clothing, water
Cost: €24 with Expert Environmental Hiking Guide and country snack
Booking: compulsory and possible by 5.00 pm of the previous day
The excursion takes place with a minimum of 7 participants
Route description:
A unique experience of its kind, passing between wild promontories, a succession of hills, hillocks, plains, woods, rock villages, quarries and tufaceous walls up to the roof of the island of Ischia, and above all discovering along the way the traces of history and social fabric of the island. A mix of emotions between reality and fantasy.
It starts from the municipality of Serrara (near the Bracconiere restaurant) and continues to enter a wild and fascinating landscape on the western side of the island (Forio), until you reach the Frassitelli wood, a terrace of very thick acacias.
In the woods, locust trees shade rocks covered in moss, lichens and wild fennel. Continuing along the path you enter the Falanga wood; here reality meets fantasy.
In fact, in this chestnut wood it is possible to find the typical holes (the snow pits) and the shelters dug into the tuff boulders precipitated by Epomeo, as a consequence of tectonic settlements (the so-called Stone Houses).
The crossing in the woods continues until you go up again, through a channel dug into the steep rock, to the highest peak of the island, Punta San Nicola, where there is the homonymous hermitage dug into the tuff.
The route ends with the arrival in Fontana.