The author has travelled hundreds of kilometres through this rural Italy on foot, and travelled thousands of kilometres through it by car. Although he was acting in a professional capacity as a geologist, his interests went beyond this wonderful country's geology to embrace everything it had to offer. In the year 1959, he embarked on ten years working in Liguria (north of Genoa) and twenty years in Calabria, on the toe of the Italian >boot<, on the flank of the Aspromonte facing the Ionian Sea. Further visits to both areas up to the present day have contributed to his fifty-year relationship with Italy, and a body of Italian experiences which was simply begging to be set down with accompanying pictures.