Menotre Waterfalls
Among Pale and Belfiore there is a magic place where you can admire the Menotre river getting up with several jumps and insinuating in narrow gorges, from here you can start your exploration: in descending manner from Pale, in ascending manner from Belfiore.
You are facing a prominent figure of this territory, that is born close to the village of Orsano and to the Mareggia mount – in the municipality of Sellano – about 800 meters high, and from the first drops it train in digging its bed among gorges and limestone rocks, along a path of 30 km.
The water makes its way into the valley that bears its name, snappy crossing the villages of Rasiglia – where various sources close to each other considerably increase its river flow – Casenove, Scopoli, Pale, Belfiore, Vescia, Scanzano and finally flowing into the Topino.
Once passed the hamlet of Belfiore, after a roundabout, you can leave your car in a forecourt surrounded by olive trees. From here is starting a trail of over a kilometers, gravel and flattish in the first part, that unfolds in the Altolina Park and it borders almost all the riverbed.
Along the track, at the points of natural interest, you can pause in some dedicated areas equipped with benches and tables, surrounded by poplar trees and ferns.
Hidden among the vegetation peep out some stone sculptures, in memory of what once was the garden of a noble family, the Elisei, settled in Pale with a building of its own since 1268. On the path you also do run into an old hydraulic brickwork which emerges from the ground, used to canalize the river’s water towards the factories built downstream over the centuries.