After one too many hairpin frights, John Huxley ditches the hired wheels and sets out on foot to explore the Amalfi Coast.

Call us cowards. But it is as early as the first afternoon of a fortnight's Italian holiday, on one of the many "Hail Mary" hairpin bends that twist traffic this way and that along the infamous Amalfi Coast road, that a snap decision is taken to ditch the rental car.

In the movies, it all looks so glamorous, so thrilling, so spectacular, as dashing young men and dolly girls, their hair streaming in the wind, swing recklessly along an empty switchback road in open-top sports cars bound for a night of debauchery, probably in Positano.

No sign of stray donkeys. Suicidal walkers. Abseilers draping wire netting over crumbling rockfaces. Crazy scooter riders. Scared tourists inching their hire cars tremulously towards Amalfi, pursued by a pack of Piaggio Ape three-wheelers, buzzing, honking, itching to pass.

No scenes in which the movie stars are confronted on a blind corner, as we are that afternoon, with the choice of sideswiping several metres of jagged, jutting "roccia sporgente" or being cleaned up by a packed Sita bus bringing commuters back from Salerno.

As the American John Steinbeck wrote, in reality Italian highway traffic is a "deafening, screaming, milling, tyre-screeching mess". But the ride along the Amalfi Coast, Europe's most famous road trip, is different again: a triumph, a local explained, of engineering over sanity.

Steinbeck recalled it was "a road high, high above the blue sea, that hooked and corkscrewed on the edge of nothing, a road carefully designed to be a little narrower than two cars side by side."

So it still seems, even if one of the cars is as small as the cute Fiat Cinquecento that we picked up at Rome's Fiumicino Airport after being forced to look elsewhere by a three-hour queue at the Avis desk, which had our booking for something bigger and movie-star bolder.

The trip ended for Steinbeck with him and his wife lying in the back seat, clutched in each other's arms, weeping hysterically, while their driver gestured with both hands as the car ran over and killed a chicken.

Our trip, from which we and the little car escape unscathed apart from a couple of paint scratches, ends the same evening in Minori, a non-touristy town where we have booked, after a web search, a reasonable apartment.

The apartment, two minutes from a free, albeit grubby, grey beach, has a view across St Trofimina church square, a performance area peopled by a colourful cast of road-sweepers, traffic wardens, garbage collectors and 24-hour lemon processors. Better still, it comes with backstreet parking.

That night, the little car is tucked away. Morning and night it is checked, with utterly un-Italian auto-paranoia, for damage from passing traffic. Otherwise, except for one brief excursion that confirms we have not overreacted to the peak-season perils, there it stays.

Fun though the little car is, it is not much missed. During the next 12 days, we take one tourist coach, a few ferries, dozens of local buses and walk and walk and walk, exploring Campania, a region rich in attractions.

They come big and small, built and natural, ancient and modern, cerebral and physical, cultural and criminal (the Camorra, the local mafia, is especially active in the clothing, concrete and waste disposal industries), crowded and crowded. Except on mountain paths.

There can be few more breathtaking, literally breathtaking, walks in the civilised world than that from Minori to Amalfi via Ravello. Though they are only a few kilometres apart, they involve thousands upon thousands of steps. Fellow walkers are rare. And while they greet each other with a display of camaraderie, they are treated liked lunatics by the well-intentioned locals. "It is too hot even for the snakes," says one woman from the shadows of her vineyard.

Certainly, after a day of long-distance walking we look, in the words of our favourite Minori ice-cream seller, "mezzo-morti". Half-dead. But, then, the colours, the views, the mountains, the architecture, the cuisine, the spectacle are to half-die for.

Unlike Minori, where authentic Italian life proceeds at a leisurely pace, Amalfi is a bustling tourist port. Most visitors don't venture much further than the front, where Sita buses stew in their own smog, and to the awe-inspiring Sant'Andrea's Cathedral.

But it's worth checking out the Moorish Church of St Maria Maggiore, the 13th-century paper mill, now a museum, and the vivid ceramic murals, downtown and at the old arsenal, that relate the rich maritime history of Amalfi.

By contrast, Ravello sits in sunny, timeless splendour atop the mountains, looking down on the coastal frenzy, almost haughtily, certainly stylishly. Visitors such as Giovanni Boccaccio, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster, Greta Garbo and Richard Wagner can't be wrong.

Once reached, by car, bus or foot through the gorgeous Valle del Dragone, Ravello, its wide piazza, 11th-century cathedral, narrow streets and magnificent gardens and vineyards, are comfortably strolled. Oxygen is not required, unlike in Positano.

A picture-postcard favourite, Positano is a vertiginously positioned town whose shops, churches and pretty stucco homes seem to have been tipped down the side of a mountain into the Mediterranean.

It is a fabulous place in which to eat, to see and to be seen, to wander along colourful streets that zigzag from the infamous coast road down to a beach pixilated with ranks of parasols. But it is also expensive, pretentious and packed to overflowing with shuffling tourists in summer.

Further afield, Sorrento, which is rightly famous for its extravagant cathedral, palatial buildings, crowded streets and fabulous views across the Gulf of Naples, can be easily and safely reached by the usual Sita bus. Our cheap ($20) guided coach tour takes in Sorrento and the excavations at Herculaneum, a manageable, must-see Roman town incongruously found in what Lonely Planet accurately identifies as a dismal Neapolitan suburb.

In a moment of madness, we decide to break out the car for a dawn dash to Pompeii. Big mistake. Not only are the roads busy but the traffic is already recklessly fast. Parking at Pompeii is an expensive nightmare. The only advantage is a convenient run up to Mount Vesuvius by way of roads piled with small mountains of garbage.

Again, the best advice is go by bus and walk, something that has to be done anyway on reaching Pompeii. For those prepared to flog to the distant corners of the site, it is a wonderful experience, enhanced by a pre-reading of Robert Harris's racy but well-researched novel Pompeii or the more detailed Pompeii: The Living City by Alex Butterworth and Ray Laurence.

But it is some measure of the chaos, decay and bloody-minded exploitation of the site that while we are there the ruins are declared a national (conservation) disaster almost two millenniums after the volcano blew its top.

A day trip to the stunning isle of Capri is best started by ferry from Minori or one of the other ports along the coast. Ideally, much of the island is explored on foot, though a regular bus service links the port with Capri and Anacapri.

So much to see, so little time. Sadly, we only scratch the surface of Naples on the journey south. Determined to spend at least one full day there, we set off once more by Sita bus via Salerno, to switch buses or catch a train. Sadly, halfway through the trip we become unwilling participants in another traditional Italian event: a transport strike. It is no-go to Naples. Inexplicably, the ferries are still sailing, however. We take a pleasant boat trip back to Amalfi.

From there it is only a two-hour walk home.

FAST FACTS

Getting there The cheapest fare to Naples is with Air France for $1535, flying Qantas to Singapore or Hong Kong and Air France to Naples via Paris. Swiss Airlines has a fare for $1606 where you fly with a partner carrier to Asia and then fly Swiss to Naples via Zurich. (Fares are low-season return from Melbourne and Sydney not including tax.)

Naples' Capodichino Airport has regular connections with Rome, and Naples and other Amalfi Coast destinations can be reached by train and bus. Car rentals at Rome's Fiumicino Airport can be chaotic, but the drive south is quick, safe and easy.

Contacts Trains, trenitalia.it; buses, sita-on-line.it; general information, italytourism.com.