Discovering Monferrato with a Guide: the Real Journey Begins When You Learn to Read the LandscapeIs a guide really only there to keep you from getting lost?

By Simona Gotta - Monfreedom Guide, This is probably one of the most common questions when people think about hiking in a hilly area such as Monferrato. Today we have digital maps, GPS devices, apps that record every trail and GPX tracks that can be downloaded in seconds, so it is understandable to think that a guide’s main role is simply to know the route and show the right way.

In reality, at least from the way I see this profession after many years spent guiding people along trails, knowing where to go is only the starting point. A hiking and environmental guide should be able to do something far more interesting: transform what we see from a simple landscape into a territory we can understand.

We can walk through a vineyard, a wood or a small village and simply think they are beautiful, or we can discover why that vineyard lies on that particular slope, what once grew in that forest, why a castle dominates that specific hill and which mountains we are looking at on the horizon. That is the moment when a walk changes completely.

Walking through a landscape does not necessarily mean knowing how to see it

When I guide a group, one of the things I find most fascinating is watching the way people’s gaze changes during the day. At first, they mainly see a succession of hills, woods and vineyards; after a few explanations, they begin to distinguish exposures, crops, ridgelines, old farmhouses, isolated churches and traces of human activity that tell a much more complex story.

For example, we may cross a woodland that looks similar to many others and discover that the area was known for generations as an old truffle ground, or that it has environmental features particularly favourable to truffle growth. At that point, people begin to look at the soil differently, recognise certain tree species, consider exposure and humidity, and understand how delicate the balance between soil, vegetation and environmental conditions really is.

This is one of the aspects I love most about my work: a guide does not simply show the landscape, but provides the tools needed to interpret it, almost translating a language that the territory is constantly speaking and that, without the right keys, we might never learn to hear.

That castle on the horizon is not just a beautiful castle

the Castle of Trisobbio - Monferrato

Monferrato is dotted with castles, towers, ancient fortified settlements and villages built in commanding positions. During a hike, it is common to spot one on the hill opposite and, without knowing the territory, we might simply take a photograph and continue walking.

If, however, we discover why that fortification was built in exactly that position, which roads it controlled, which families lived there, which conflicts crossed those hills or which legends became associated with the place, the castle immediately stops being a decorative element in the landscape and becomes part of a much broader story.

This happens constantly in Monferrato because history has left traces everywhere: in the position of villages, often built on higher ground for defensive reasons; in rural chapels standing along old routes; in roads that still follow links used for centuries; and even in the way farmhouses were positioned in relation to cultivated land.

Once we learn to recognise these elements, the landscape stops being merely beautiful and begins to explain why it has become exactly what we see today.

Panoramic viewpoints that do not always appear on the map

Then there are places that are unlikely to appear if you simply search for “viewpoint” on a digital map. It might be a small ridge, a bend between two vineyards, a hidden clearing or an unremarkable dirt road that suddenly opens onto an extraordinary panorama.

Anyone who has walked through the same territory for years learns not only to know these places, but also to understand when they can offer their best, because in a landscape the right moment can matter almost as much as the location itself.

On some summer days, when humidity hangs in the air, you may mainly see the gentle succession of Monferrato hills; yet all it takes is a particularly clear day, perhaps after the wind has swept the sky, for the Alps to appear suddenly beyond those same hills.

The eye can then travel from the vineyards at our feet for dozens and dozens of kilometres towards the mountains, with Monviso often standing out thanks to its unmistakable profile and, in the best conditions, a vast section of the Alpine arc visible across the horizon.

One of the small privileges of being a guide is precisely this: knowing those apparently ordinary places where it is worth stopping the group, allowing a few seconds of silence and simply inviting everyone to look farther.

Behind every hike there are many hours the participants never see

This is probably the least visible part of our work. When a group arrives at the meeting point and finds the guide ready to set off, it may seem as though the excursion begins at that moment, while in reality it started much earlier.

A route is studied, walked, checked and often modified. We assess trail conditions, possible critical points, alternatives, connections and the characteristics of the ground in different seasons, because a route that is perfectly enjoyable in spring can become very different after weeks of rain or during the hottest part of summer.

Farm tracks can change, some paths gradually become overgrown, small streams that are normally harmless can become more demanding after a storm, while forestry or agricultural work may alter a section that was perfectly accessible only a few months earlier.

Knowing a territory deeply also means knowing when it is better to change direction, choose an alternative or avoid a section that, on that particular day, does not offer the best conditions. It is work that participants may never notice precisely because its purpose is to allow them to experience the day naturally.

A guide also knows the people who live in the territory

There is another dimension that no mapping app can fully replace: the relationships built over time with local people.

By returning to the same villages, we get to know producers, property owners, local associations, wineries, small museums and people who preserve fragments of history that often never appear in tourist guides. These relationships can sometimes add experiences to a hike that an independent visitor would find difficult to organise alone.

It may be a privately owned Infernot opened especially for the group, a small church that is usually closed, a producer personally explaining their wine, or a local resident sharing stories, traditions and memories that still belong to the community.

This is one of the things that makes slow tourism particularly rewarding: you do not simply pass through a place, you enter, for a few hours, into its history and, whenever possible, into the lives of the people who continue to inhabit it.

The pace of the hike is part of the guide’s work too

Guiding a group does not necessarily mean making people walk faster or trying to reach as many points of interest as possible. Very often it means exactly the opposite: understanding where it is worth slowing down and when a stop can become an essential part of the experience.

Not every stop is for resting. Some are for observing a landscape as a whole, others for explaining a geological feature, listening to the sounds of the woods, recognising a plant or telling the story of what lies in front of us.

We are now used to a kind of tourism in which the value of a day seems to depend on the number of places visited and photographs collected. During a guided hike, however, we can choose a different measure: not how much we have seen, but how much we have understood of what we have crossed.

Nature becomes even more interesting when we recognise the details

Walking in a natural environment already gives us the opportunity to step away from routine and slow down our everyday pace, but when we learn to recognise what surrounds us, our relationship with the landscape changes as well.

A tree is no longer simply part of a wood, a rock emerging from the ground may tell a geological story millions of years old, and a small valley may reveal the work of water, agriculture and human activity over centuries.

Monferrato is especially interesting because the landscape we see today is the result of a continuous relationship between nature and people. Vineyards, woods, cultivated fields, farmhouses and villages are not separate elements, but parts of the same system that has slowly evolved over time.

An environmental guide tries to make these connections visible, because understanding why a landscape is shaped in a particular way also means learning to appreciate it far more deeply.

The real difference? Going home knowing something you did not know before

At the end of a hike, of course, I am pleased when people remember a particularly beautiful view, a castle, a Big Bench, an Infernot or perhaps a wine tasted during the day. But I consider what happens afterwards even more important.

I like to think that, when they return to those hills in the future even without us, someone might look at a vineyard and remember the importance of exposure, observe a village built on top of a hill and wonder which defensive needs determined its position, or walk through a forest and ask themselves which characteristics of the soil, which animals and which ancient human activities lie behind what they are seeing.

At that point the guide is no longer physically there, but part of the work remains: they have taught people to look more carefully.

That is why we choose to tell the story of Monferrato while walking

Monfreedom excursions are built around precisely this idea. We do not simply want to take people from a starting point to a destination, but to reveal everything that exists in between: a forgotten path, an old truffle ground, a chapel hidden among the fields, the story of the castle dominating the horizon, an Infernot opened especially for the occasion or that particular panoramic spot where, on a clear day, the view stretches from the vineyards of Monferrato all the way to the Alps.

Thanks to technology, getting lost on a route is certainly more difficult today. But another risk remains, one that is much less obvious: crossing a territory, photographing it and being able to say you have been there without ever truly learning how to read it.

And that is exactly where, in my view, a guide makes the difference.