“The Ducati trail?” My husband was suddenly excited. “Do we get to ride motorbikes?” I had to explain that the “Ducati” in Sentiero dei Ducati, a new hiking route being promoted by Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region, refers not to the high-performance bikes made nearby, but to the medieval duchies that once ruled north and central Italy. And far from eating up miles on a sleek machine, we’d be trekking along centuries-old footpaths that once linked ducal territories in this hilly land rising to the high Apennines.

Central Italy’s best-known walk, the Via degli Dei, has been a victim of its own popularity: about 300 people a day now tackle the 80-mile route between Bologna and Florence. But the Sentiero dei Ducati, farther north-west, promised silence, empty paths and wild land with not another human in sight. Starting in leafy Reggio Emilia, less-visited neighbour of Parma and Modena, it runs for 125 miles to Sarzana, near the Ligurian coast.