Seven days on the Amalfi Coast, without a car.

The Amalfi Coast is a week that most people spend as a day.

They come over from Naples or Sorrento on a coach, get ninety minutes in Positano and an hour in Amalfi, eat a lemon something, and leave having seen the coast through a window. It is the most common way to do this place, and it is why people come home saying it was beautiful and crowded and they're not sure they'd go back.

The fix isn't a better day trip. It's staying — one base, seven days, and no car. I've made the full case against the car elsewhere; the short version is that it makes the coast feel small and slow at the same time.

So here is the seven-day Amalfi Coast itinerary I'd hand a friend. It moves east to west, it uses boats whenever there are boats, and it has exactly one thing booked in advance.

Pick one base. Make it small.

The coast is short. Amalfi to Positano is about twenty-five minutes on a ferry, so there is no reason to change beds. Moving hotels here costs half a day each time, most of it spent carrying a bag up a staircase that was not built with luggage in mind.

I'd base in Atrani. It's the next cove east of Amalfi, ten minutes away on foot, with one square, one beach, and the general air of a place that isn't trying to sell you anything. You get Amalfi's ferries and buses without Amalfi's volume at night.

The trade-off, honestly: Atrani is tiny. There are only a few places to eat and you'll know all of them by day three. If you want a choice of twenty, sleep in Amalfi itself and accept the day-tripper tide. Positano is the one I'd talk you out of as a base. It's the far end of the line, it costs the most, and every day there begins with a climb.

Day one: arrive by water.

The arrival is the first good decision. Take a fast train from Naples to Salerno, around forty minutes, then the ferry to Amalfi, about thirty-five more. You come round the headland and the town is simply there, stacked up its valley, and you haven't spent one minute on the coast road.

Walk to Atrani. Drop the bag, swim off the dark sand under the road arches, eat on the square. Nothing ticketed. The whole job on day one is to stop travelling.

Arrive by road and the coast is a traffic problem. Arrive by boat and it's a place. — On the way in

Days two and three go up.

Day two is Amalfi, early. The cathedral before the day boats land — pay for the cloister, which takes you through the crypt as well — then up the main street until the shops thin out and the paper museum appears, in a mill left over from the centuries when paper was the town's business. If the morning is still cool, keep walking into the Valle delle Ferriere: a green valley, ruined ironworks, small waterfalls. Turn round whenever lunch starts to matter.

Buy a week of bus tickets that afternoon, at a tabacchi. The driver doesn't sell them, and the moment you need one is never near a shop.

Day three is Ravello, and it only works in one direction. Take the bus up, early. Villa Rufolo first, then the full length of Villa Cimbrone's garden to the terrace at the end, where a row of marble busts looks out at nothing but air. Lunch on the square. Then leave on foot: a stone staircase drops through lemon terraces to Minori in about an hour, all of it downhill. Minori is the town that takes the lemon pastry most seriously. Take the ferry home if they're running.

Day four is slow on purpose.

Two fixed points and a lot of nothing. Late morning, the bus west to the Fiordo di Furore: a slot in the cliff with a stone bridge high overhead and a pocket of beach underneath. Check that the stairs down are open before you go. The view from the bridge is worth the stop either way.

Then Marina di Praia, a beach wedged between two cliffs, for a swim and lunch before the sun leaves it. Finish in Praiano. It faces west, which on this coast is rarer than it sounds, and the last two hours of light there are the best on the route.

This is the day people try to trade for something with a ticket. Don't.

Day five: walk into Positano.

The big one. Early bus from Amalfi up to Bomerano. Buy a picnic at the alimentari, because there is very little on the trail. Then walk the Path of the Gods to Nocelle: about seven kilometres along the cliff, two to three hours, almost no shade, and nearly all of it gently downhill in this direction.

From Nocelle, roughly fifteen hundred steps go down to Positano. Your knees will have opinions. There's a small local bus if they win.

This is the right way to meet Positano: from above, on foot, already tired, with the whole town laid out below you like something you earned. Eat a late lunch, look at the tiled dome, stand on the beach for ten minutes, and take the ferry home before the evening queue. Buy that return ticket when you arrive, not when you want to leave.

Day six: the one thing I'd book.

The coast from the water, on a small boat, for a whole day. Sea caves, swim stops, the towns from underneath. It is the only thing on this itinerary I'd reserve before flying, and the question that matters is how many people are on board. Ask for the number.

It sits on day six rather than day two for a reason. Boats don't go out in rough water, and you want days on either side to swap it with. If the sea is wrong, trade it with the slow day and nothing else moves.

Leave one unclaimed hour at the end. Then scialatielli for the last dinner, somewhere without a view, where it will be cheaper and better. Day seven is the ferry back to Salerno and a train north — or the bus, with a wide margin, if the boats aren't running.

When to go, and for how long.

May to mid-June, or mid-September into October. The ferries run roughly April to October, the water is at its warmest at the end of that window, and the coast in August is the same place with a queue in front of it.

If you only have four days, keep the arrival, Ravello, the walk into Positano and the boat. What you lose is the slow day — which is, as usual, the one you'd have described when you got home.

If you'd rather build your own, the rest of the library is there too — the point of a forkable trip is that you delete half of it.