Round the western end

Posted on November 24, 2011 by AdrianC

After our mud-bath, the Austrian owner of the Torre Salsa site greeted us with the news that we couldn’t camp in their beach section, as the ground was too soft… We didn’t need telling twice, so settled in the main area. The minimum two-day stay (first time we’ve come across this) turned out not to be the issue we thought it might – we spent several days there, just milling about and doing not very much – helped no end by the very friendly cats about. We lost count at a dozen or more. The site also boasts a “Nordic Walking” (a stroll with ski poles and a marketing department) park – yet, strangely, there was no pole rental or instruction or anything similar on offer. A bit of a missed opportunity. So, being the rebels we are, we just ignored the pole bit and wandered for kilometre after kilometre. Along the cliff tops, along the beach, just around and about – all without actually leaving the site apart from a brief foray into town to do some shopping.

At least, that was the original theory. It didn’t quite go so smoothly as that. We tidied the van into “road mode”, and I went to drive off. The handbrake had other ideas, and we stayed resolutely static. A quick curse and fiddle later, and it appeared that the rear brakes had stuck totally on. Nothing for it – on with the overalls, out with the tools, and get mucky. Oddly, that seemed to be all they needed – a good stare. By the time I’d got the van in the air, and the wheels off, all was normal. Go figure. Maybe it was the van repaying me for the mud wrestling? It clearly didn’t feel that was enough revenge, either. We opened the fridge door to get some lunch out – and it wasn’t cold. A bit of experimentation and closer attention revealed that it had died completely when on mains electricity. Gas was its usual lack-lustre self, as was the 12v mode (which only works when the engine’s running). Great.

Still, these are minor hiccups in the grand scheme of life, so we just continued as normal. The fridge is small enough that it doesn’t hold more than a day or two’s worth of stuff anyway, so it’s more of an inconvenience than a major disaster.

Once we left Torre Salsa, we doubled back on ourselves, in search of a couple of sites we’d heard about, back towards Agrigento. The Vulcanelli dei Maccalube were the first. All we knew was their rough location and that they were “small mud volcanoes”. Intriguing, huh? What we eventually found was a slightly moon-scape field of hardened earth – with some damp mud in a few places.

Then we heard the first sound effects. Blollop, bloop, splooodge. As we watched, bubbles appeared in the viscous mud and burst. A wander around revealed several more dramatic craterlets – some throwing mud a good foot or more. By the time we gave up attempting to capture the most dramatic on the camera, we must have spent an hour or two there, giggling like schoolkids at the sight and sound. Very well worth the detour.

The other was a “famous” gypsum cliff, the Scala dei Turchi. Turning a corner of the beach, the white stone rose in gentle waves, easily climbable on foot above dramatic seas and skies.

And, with that, it was time to head along the coast towards the Greek temples at Selinunte. Arriving at the camp site, we were met by – we assumed – the owner. After a brief greeting in a mix of Italian and German, he grabbed Ellie by the hand and virtually dragged her into the camp site, to demonstrate exactly how the toilets and showers functioned… It turned out that he wasn’t the owner, nor even staff – but a German staying there for the winter. His huge 7.5t truck-based American-style motorhome was complete with a large covered car trailer for his convertible Mercedes SLK – the trailer doubling as a utility room, with the drain hose for a washing machine snaking out from the covers towards the loo block!

Neil and Jenny were already on the site, so another evening was predictably spent laughing over drinks and food, before we all got on our bikes and headed off to the ruins themselves the following morning. Spread over a huge area, the ruined city contains several Doric temples (as at Agrigento and Paestum) in varying stages of identifiability.

There’s also the remains of city walls and residential quarters, together with another temple complex, of a very different and smaller scale. Whilst in there, the four of us got chatting to a Canadian couple, SueAnn and Gordon, who were staying in a B&B just up the road from our campsite. Our campsite had what looked to be a decent restaurant in the front, so we all arranged to meet up there later.

Coming out of the ruins, Ellie & I headed down to the nearby harbour to hit the cash machine – as we re-mounted our bikes, Ellie felt a gentle nudge against her leg, and looked down to see a dog gazing adoringly up at her. A bit on the skinny side, but in otherwise good condition, it was a sort of slightly labradorish mutt, but with huge perky ears seemingly stolen off a passing bat. Not being great fans of feral hounds, we just ignored it and cycled off – with the dog trotting along behind. As we passed one house, a large Alsation launched itself at the gates, barking ferociously – only to be met by “our” dog, giving just as much back. Once we were safely past, battle was disengaged, and station resumed just behind us. We arrived at the campsite, and – yep, the dog was still with us. Through the evening, it kept guard outside the van, and was still there when we returned from the restaurant – very decent pasta for all, washed down with carafes of house red, then back to Neil and Jenny’s van with the Canadians to continue the chat, lubricated by a mixture of various local liqueurs (SueAnn’s protestations that she didn’t actually like them much appeared to be purely for appearances sakes). The dog was still outside the door at bed time, at the start of a night-long vigil which saw it only moving to accompany Ellie to the loo and back in the middle of the night… We’d clearly gained ourselves a new pet, whether we wanted it or not. It was with a mixture of trepidation, relief and disappointment that we opened the door in the morning to find our faithful but unwanted friend had disappeared – presumably chased off at dawn by the site owner.

The road along the coast then took us to Mazara del Vallo, a town with heavy North African and Arabic influences. Wandering through the Kasbah, a maze of narrow streets enlivened by ceramic art all over the walls and even pavements, with the accompaniment of Arabic music and voices wafting gently from all directions, really brought home how close we are here to the Tunisian coast – just a short ferry ride.

We returned to Mazara the following day to continue our explorations, and were rewarded by being able to wander into the cathedral. It’d been locked first time, and seemed to be only open this time for a wedding, with photos being taken on the front step as we followed the florists in through a side entrance. The fish market wasn’t large, but the fish was the freshest we’d seen, with one stallholder demonstrating exactly HOW fresh by picking up a shimmering golden-orange fish with a finger under one gill – the fish responded by giving gentle shivers and wiggles, fins a-flapping in vain.

The western end of Sicily really is a bit sparse for campsites – during November there’s only one between Selinunte and Palermo, so we arrived with an air of expectation to using it as a base for day-trips out. A decent enough site, we were the only occupants the first night there, assuming you don’t count the large numbers of outsized Mosquitoes who seemed to relish the arrival of fresh foreign food. The surroundings of the site were nothing particularly special – a scrubby and gently derelict beach resort (and, yes, more random dogs which followed us back to the van – but this time in much worse condition, one limping badly, the other mangy). Neil and Jenny’s arrival the following night lifted the gloom slightly, and we all piled into our van again for a trip out to Marsala, home of the eponymous fortified wine. Another cracking town, with a primarily 17th century & later heart of piazzas and palazzos. We meandered around for a while, with more extremely fresh fish in the old market – one stall had a couple of octopi in a bucket, together with sea urchins. As we wandered past, the octopi were mounting a fairly determined escape attempt…

A small kiosk was doing brisk business selling sandwiches – yet only had one on the menu. Their boards proclaimed it as a unique classic called “Ca’Meusa”. A quick enquiry revealed it to be a type of sliced beef, known as “Milza” – it looked dark, probably marinated. Mmm. Gotta be worth a try for a couple of Euros, right? It was delicious. Far tastier than I’d ever have thought spleen to be. No, seriously. Spleen. Fortunately, it wasn’t until considerably later that we found this out…

Then, on the edge of town, more salt flats – after Guerande and the echoes of Ellie’s Indian visit to Tuticorin, then Figuera da Foz and the Camargue… These ones had the added benefit of being right on the coast, with small windmills to grind the clumped salt into fine powder, together with brightly painted wooden fishing boats and some islands off shore.

The mozzies at the campsite hadn’t taken long to persuade us that it wasn’t a great lingering base, despite the palm trees, so the road up towards Palermo beckoned, taking us past another Greek temple at Segesta. As we came towards the modern town of Calatafimi-Segesta, we saw signs for what we took to be a Roman Ossuary, just a couple of km up into the hills. I think we might have misunderstood slightly, since we arrived at a Victorian-looking stone obelisk memorial to Garibaldi’s 1860 landing with the “mille” – a thousand volunteer fighters who went on to take Sicily in the first steps towards the unification of the country. As we arrived, the caretaker was just locking up from a large group, and offered to give us a whistle-stop tour of the memorials to those who’d died in one of the first battles after the landing, fought on this spot. A walk through a tree-lined memorial avenue later, and back on towards the temple. We had no intention of actually visiting on this occasion – but the sight of it, almost complete against a dramatic mountainous backdrop, made us want to return before we leave the island.

And so we headed towards Palermo – through scruffy hilltowns renowned as Mafia strongholds, and towards a campsite we’d been warned was difficult to find. We thought we’d somehow excelled ourselves, when we saw signs towards a park of the same name, so after a quick supermarket top-up, we followed them. It turned out just to be a coincidence, and a housing estate with no camping – our actual destination was a chunk further along. On we plodded, through some attractive and lively seaside towns, but in heavy traffic. We sat behind the same cyclist for ages, then finally got the chance to pass him. Shortly after we did so, though, the fridge door burst open – spilling contents everywhere. Whilst we were stopped at the side of the road, chasing mushrooms around the floor, that cyclist pulled up to the driver’s door and asked if we were looking for camping? Yes… “I’m the owner, follow me!”

Posted in By Country - Italy, Food stuff, Travel stuff, Van stuff | 1 Comment

Six months on…

Posted on November 19, 2011 by AdrianC

Today, 19th November, marks six months since we walked out of our house and drove to Dover.

A lot’s happened in that time. We’ve been to a lot of places.

We’ve covered about 20,000km (difficult to be sure, because of the speedo cable dying for a while).

The van’s had a little lie-down under us, quickly fixed – and one which dragged on and on.

We’ve slept at 103 locations (if you count two back in the UK for a wedding in July, the hotel in Brive when the van was hors-de-combat, and two friends’ houses). Apart from six nights in the UK, three in the hotel, ten at John’s and five at Paul’s, every single night of those six months has required us to unfold the bed at night and fold it away again in the morning. Apart from the nights we’ve stopped somewhere free, we’ve paid as much as €33 and as little as €6 for a night’s pitch. We’ve also been asked €6 just for electricity for a night…

We’ve had a lot of fun.

We’ve climbed the highest sand dune in Europe, and driven the highest road. We’ve seen art from prehistoric to contemporary . We’ve been melting in near-on 40degrees, and we’ve been snowed on. Hard.

We’ve eaten a lot of good stuff. Of course. And drunk plenty of good stuff, too. Of course.

And a lot more besides. We’re still here. Wherever the road’s gone. It’s going to go to a lot more places yet.

Only two things are for certain. We don’t regret a minute of it – even the “challenging” or really disappointing ones – and we still don’t know what we want to do and where we want to settle next…

(By the way – no, the van still hasn’t got a name…)

Us at Easter, before we left…

One man, one woman, one campervan, enjoying a bottle of bubbly in the sunshine...

And us this morning…

Posted in Personal stuff, Site stuff | 5 Comments

Getting stuck in…

Posted on November 15, 2011 by EllieGee

Some days take on a different dimension quite suddenly and unexpectedly…

We spent the night at a nice campsite near Valle dei Templi with the usual large family of characterful camping cats we now expect. We woke up to another beautiful day and made a big breakfast of scrambled egg, fried bread and pancetta – washed down with tea of course and lovely Sicilian blood orange juice. Decent fresh juice is the one thing we’ve not had much success with in Italy, but we found a locally produced brand which is wonderful though elusive. Camping cats may have received the extra fat from the pancetta, I can’t possibly comment.

Only a short distance away, driving on down the main coast hugging route we rounded a bend and saw Siculiana on the hillside in front of us. It looked rather inviting so we pulled off and spent an hour or so exploring a charming place just gearing up for its local literary festival which was to start later on in the day. Naturally this reminded us of our home town of Chorleywood which will shortly be putting on its Litfest without us for the first time in four years.

After only a few more kilometres we saw signs for Torre Salsa nature reserve. Horst and Jutta, a German couple we met in Matera had recommended this area and an Agriturismo campsite within it. Having seen their photos we really wanted to see the area for ourselves although we thought it was a bit early in the day to pick Torre Salsa for our next camping stop. We took a turning signed for the nature reserve and kept on driving in following the WWF Panda-logoed signs for ‘mare’. I advised Adrian that this wasn’t the route for the campsite and wasn’t on the map. He decided to keep on going when the road turned into a track and got really rather rough and steep in places. No matter, we’ve been on roads like this before and the views were stunning. We drove through a valley of vines and olive trees and turned off down a track that got increasingly muddy. Rounding a bend and seeing not the sea but a river of mud, it was time to back up and turn around. Trying to turn round by pulling into a very soft and boggy verge wasn’t the best move and we were soon axle deep in mud with the wheels spinning and a nasty clutch smell. We tryed to find debris to provide traction and dug out the wheels as far as possible all to no avail. Here we were, pretty much in the middle of nowhere and ‘wherever the road goes’ wasn’t going anywhere. We are used to getting 2cvs out of mud, having been keen off-roaders in the past. But they are so light and besides there’s usually a gang of friends around to help. A heavily laden VW T25 and just two of you is quite a different matter, especially when it’s your home too.

There was no option but to go for help from the nearest … where?  I’d checked out the landscape around the bend and noticed a shepherd herding sheep way up a hill in the distance. There were also houses dotted around on the hill top but were they inhabited? So many buildings in Sicily seem to be abandoned. I stayed with the van while Adrian marched off.

All sorts of thoughts go through your mind when you’re stuck all alone in a mud caked firmly stuck van in a fly invested swampy area. What would happen if no one was home? It was, after all, the middle of a working day. What if no one understood or could help? What if Adrian inadvertantly stumbled across some of the family run businesses that Sicily is known for? How much would it all cost? Was there damage underneath from the van resting on its bed of earth? Was it worth using the fly spray? Thank goodness we’d had a good breakfast!

After around an hour I phoned to see how he was doing. Only to hear his phone ringing in response in the door pocket. Then thunder rumbled ominously and it started raining. Luckily just some light rain, not the deluge it could have been. An hour more and I heard the very pleasant sound of an engine and around the bend came Adrian in a 4×4. Help at last. And considerable amazement that he’d found someone with a 4×4 who could come out at the drop of a VW into a mud puddle.

Adrian says…
Once it became obvious that the van wasn’t moving without external assistance, I headed off to try to find somebody – anybody – that could help. As Ellie says – there weren’t a lot of obvious choices. Eventually, I found the shepherd. Small problem – my limited Italian wasn’t exactly a match for his thick accent. I think he suggested I find the patrone somewhere up that-away. Up that-away, I eventually found a very empty house. Hmm. Maybe not that way, then. So what about those houses up there, way up on the ridge? There was the short, straight route – or I could try to find an easier route, one that didn’t involve ravines and cliff faces. Eventually, I scrambled to the top – to find one of the houses I’d seen was only half-built, whilst the other was shut up tightly behind tall electric gates. It sounded like a large and hungry dog was home, but nobody else. Then I spotted a motorhome, with washing on the line, in front of another house just up the lane…

Some broken Italian later, and the nice lady (whose name I completely forgot to ask) told me that her husband would be home shortly, and he’d be delighted to help. But first, would I like a glass of water? Or a coffee? And, at that point, lightning heralded the arrival of rain.

Soon, a Suzuki jeep arrived – and, yes, he’d be happy to help. But first, would I mind helping him unload the car? Ten large cases of wine later, we were off – not towards the main track we’d followed in, but straight across some very dodgy rocky footpaths. Finally, we got to somewhere I sort-of recognised from my wanderings – and found a somewhat less-than-amused looking Ellie, who’d clearly spent the last two hours practising her fiercest Paddington stares.

Wolfi from Germany was in the middle of working on the house he is buildng on the ridge and very kindly came to our rescue. The first attempt failed though. He had a rigid tow pole not a rope and with the angle the van was sitting at in relation to the road, it just wasn’t going to work. More wheel spin. So now what?

Wolfi drove us back up the track over the hills to a chap he thought might be able to help us. But we would have to pay him of course. The chap turned out to be busy working on unloading a truck with his mate and again, they dropped everything and grabbed a tow rope. Back down the rough old road in Wolfi’s car following theirs. The rope was fastened and the van was pulled straight out. Wow. Phew.

How much would they charge though and did we have enough cash on us? Amazingly not only did they totally refuse any sort of payment, but they had to be persuaded to take a couple of bottles of wine as a thank you. Wolfi insisted on accompanying us to the main road to ensure the van made it up the track. It did, and it was a really smooth ride compared to the bouncy ride of the 4×4.

A different kind of a day – from a spectacular drive to a seemingly hopeless situation to wonderful people who were free and happy to help us. Although we really don’t wish for this type of adventure, there is no doubt that they enrich the travelling experience. By the time we were fully rescued, we were really looking forward to getting to the campsite at Torre Salsa after all. We looked back on the events of the day and the lessons learned, and the kindness of people, with a welcome glass in hand overlooking yet another sunset over the sea.

Posted in By Country - Italy, Food stuff, Personal stuff, Van stuff, Wildlife stuff | 5 Comments

Southern Sicily

Posted on November 15, 2011 by AdrianC

Ominous and insistent midnight buzzing has been the far-too-consistent soundtrack at the last couple of campsites, as mozzies have done their best to drive our chewed carcasses further insane. The campsite near Ragusa, Scarabeo, was lovely in all respects bar one – the location was surrounded by intensive poly-tunnel fruit and veg growing, and the air was thick at certain times of day with flies. Not just flies, either – mixed in with them were little biting buggers of various types.

The site was solid, mostly with Germans settling in for the winter, but some familiar vans and faces from previous sites. The “ACSI trail” is starting to become very predictable, as the route options become more limited – there’s a ring of campsites around the Sicilian coast, about half of which are in the discount card book everybody’s carrying. So, of course, all those going anti-clockwise are seeing each other at site after site. Ellie’s previous post mentioned that we’d met Neil and Jenny here again – once the half-joking accusations of stalking had died down, out came a corkscrew and a wooden spoon. Campsite cats were again out in force – this time, though, they weren’t ones that you’d give a cuddle lightly. They seemed to be earning their keep well, though – we found a pile of lightly gnawed innards (definitely rat – the tail was still present) in the grass just behind our pitch one morning.

It was a good base for heading back to Ragusa, the hill town we’d passed through a couple of days previously. Since their van is somewhat less than manouverable and parkable, Neil and Jenny dived into the back seat of our van for the day. Ragusa was heavily rebuilt, as with many other towns in this corner of the island, after a massively destructive late 17th century earthquake. It split Ragusa clean in two, with a huge cleft between the halves, leaving one half a severely space-constrained hill town whilst the other opened out onto a plain. Needless to say, that half has grown and been developed in the interim, but the other half – Ragusa Ibla – has stayed a gem. All steep streets and alleyways, the architectural consistency is amazing – just about everything is baroque.

During brief bar breaks, Jenny also introduced us to a couple of traditional Sicilian dishes, favourites of hers from several years spent working in Italy – Arancini (deep-fried rice balls with a savoury centre) and Cannoli (pastry tubes filled with ricotta cheese and dusted with crushed Pistachios – grown on the slopes of Etna).

A somewhat less successful daytrip was organised by the campsite themselves, with minibuses taking people in to a large market at nearby Vittoria. The day wasn’t exactly optimum, with the rain approaching horizontal on occasions, which probably contributed to the cheerless sight of a stream of vehicles (including stall trucks!) queueing to leave the market as we arrived. The relatively small food end of the market remained thriving, veggies piled high next to crates of escaping snails – but the rest was just a mix of plastic household rubbish and poor-quality tasteless clothing. Since Vittoria’s a modern town without much in the way of attractions, the two and a half hours until the minibus returned dragged slowly, even with the help of hiding in a nearby bar for some fortifying pastries.

We headed inland for our next short leg – towards the reputed geographical centre of the island, Enna. We hunted through the narrow back streets of Caltagironi, a noted centre of ceramic production, for the staircase to one of the main churches – 140-odd steps each with a ceramic tiled riser of a different pattern. The hunt was in vain, but we might still have several items of laundry, liberated from some of the low overhanging balconies lining the narrow streets, trailing from the roof of the van… As the days are so short now the clocks have changed, we got to Piazza Armerina and started to hunt for an open agriturismo campsite. Eventually, we found it – only to find the gate firmly chained and padlocked. A “problem with the water”, allegedly. Shame, because it was in a stunning location in the rolling countryside on the edge of town. That gave us a dilemma, though – head on towards Enna towards a site that was rumoured to be open, but for which we had very few details, or head back to the coast towards one we knew existed and was open. We chose the coast. By the time we’d fought our way through the chaotic traffic of Gela, dominated by a huge petrochemical plant on the edge of town, and found the site night had fallen properly. So we just drove in, headed towards the first empty pitch – and watched as Neil and Jenny’s bemused heads poked out of the window of their van in the next pitch… They quickly recovered sufficiently to pass us a glass of red.

After a mozzie-munched night, a second attempt at seeing Enna followed, again with extra passengers. Enna long had the reputation of being impregnable, but we couldn’t quite figure out why as we approached. Then the cloud lifted slightly to reveal the upper town, filling the top of a small rock high above the lower town, with a large Norman castle at one end. The main street was narrow, steep and packed solid – but we managed to find a fairly central parking space, and wandered up into the clouds. As we approached the Duomo, the top of the tower faded gently into misty white – so we continued upwards towards the castle and neighbouring “Rock of Ceres”. Fortunately, by the time we got there, the cloud had cleared and lifted – we stared from the tip of the rock across miles of lower countryside, with thunder and lightning visible and audible in the distance, seemingly far beneath us.

From Enna, back to Piazza Armerina’s Roman Villa. Famed for the mosaic floors, those we could see were truly superb – unfortunately, much of the extensive site was closed for preservation work, and the areas we could get to were severely curtailed.

By the time we returned to the coast, it was once again pitch black – and starting to hammer down with rain. You’d think that that would stop the mozzies, wouldn’t you? We wish.

In the morning, though, blue skies and a warm sun greeted us, ready for heading to Agrigento, home of the Valle dei Templi – a ridge of hill outside the modern town, containing several Greek temples. One is superbly preserved, and almost complete. Others have a few columns erect, whilst the largest – one of the largest known from the whole Greek empire, albeit never finished – is nothing but a pile of rubble. The nearby museum gave us an idea of the epic scale of the temple of Olympian Zeus – well over 100m long, over 50m wide, and believed to have been more than 30m high, the roof was partially supported by 8m tall statues. One has been reassembled in the museum, together with a couple of surviving heads – to try to extrapolate from those to the whole building leaves you awe-struck. The museum’s extensive collection (every time you thought you must be about finished, there were a few more rooms round another corner) also contained a surprising number of incredibly well preserved large vases, beautifully decorated with scenes illustrating the great classic tales.

The icing on the cake, though, lay with the frequently uneasy combination of classic architecture and modern art. Igor Mitoraj’s fragmentary bronze statues dotted around the ruins really added something.

Days like this – perfect weather accompanying a wonderful visit to a fascinating site – are what makes us put up with the bites and the rain.

Posted in Art & Culture stuff, By Country - Italy, Food stuff, Personal stuff, Travel stuff | 1 Comment

An island we couldn’t refuse

Posted on November 7, 2011 by EllieGee

Our first week and a half in Sicily has been one of ups and downs, mainly due to the weather which has veered from close to freezing point up to high 20s sunshine, with driving rains and gusty winds in between. Our moods have swung in tune with this in a week that’s seen us relaxing in shorts and t-shirts with meals outside one moment and taking retail therapy to get more winter clothing and comfort eating a bacon double cheeseburger with extra large fries the next.

Darker early evenings have meant more time spent in a tiny van and have put pressure on our electrics – although the van has two batteries, one for “leisure” and one for starting, only the leisure battery is charged whilst we’re on mains power. Unfortunately, the interior lighting and the stereo all come off the van battery, so the jump leads have been pressed into use on a couple of mornings.

Nonetheless, we have fallen for Sicily like we have for the rest of Italy. Following on from the southern mainland, Sicily is also run down and scruffy in places, but the charm and warm welcome we have received from its people have already touched us. We arrived at the port of Messina after a 20 minute, but €50 (one-way) crossing from Villa San Giovanni. We headed first for a campsite along the north coast which turned out to have closed early for winter but luckily managed to find one further along, past Milazzo.

The weather was good the next day, so we decided to head south to see Mount Etna and had a wonderful drive on SS185 – a route that takes you over the mountains via a wonderful hill town Novara di Sicilia.

These mountains were nothing as we rounded one bend and saw Etna lifting her snowy head above the clouds. At 3300 metres high Etna dominates for many miles … that’s when she’s not totally shrouded in cloud.

Our second night saw us at a quiet campsite, again by the sea, north of Taormina. This site was particularly blessed with the most adorable kittens and cat imaginable. An overdose of cuteness, and Adrian named them Nero, Bianca and Arthur (halfer black and white), and old blue eyes Frank, a huge siamese cross, who did look quite fed up.

We totally failed to find the fabled Greek amphitheatre at Taormina (Italian signage?), and instead took a route round the northern edge of Etna. Etna is still an active volcano, its last major eruptions took place in the early 2000s, and it is surrounded by the barren landscape of huge lava flows along this route. We stopped at Randazzo, a small town built from the dark volcanic rock. We caught the end of the Saturday market and found a busy pasticceria (patisserie or cake shop!). It was a step back in time and before we knew it we were walking out with a box full of cakes. These helped lift our spirits as the campsite near Nicolosi on the south side of Etna was deserted apart from a handyman, and was very chilly though the black-as-soot earth was striking. The start of around 24 hours of heavy rain kept us tucked up in the van with our high tea and DVDs.

Next day we dashed through the continuing downpour to Nicolosi. The helpful chap in the tourist office didn’t hold out much hope for the weather for the rest of the week though, but gave us a number to ring to find out when it might be possible to get up to the volcano. We’re disappointed at being on Etna but not seeing it, and not knowing when we will be able to make the trip up to the crater. We’re lucky as we have the time and freedom to come back and try our luck again, unlike the poor people on the tour buses dragging through the teeming streets of Nicolosi.

Instead, as mentioned above, we spent the rest of the day at a shopping centre. After stocking up on much needed clothing and shoes, as well as food and drink, we headed for yet another coastal campsite just north of Sicily’s second city of Catania. It was noisy, very noisy – the drama of waves crashing on the rocks below was deafeningly thrilling. We had just missed seeing our Costa Verde friends Neil and Jenny who had been here a couple of days before, but chatted to another English couple who had spent a couple of weeks there and not had brilliant weather, although they had managed a swim in the sea.

Not put off by tales of attempted bag snatches from fellow campers, we spent a day in Catania. It’s a faded grandeur city with a lively food market where we were at last able to stock up on much-missed fresh ginger. The seafood looked amazing, but we tried to avert our gaze from the whole sets of tripe/intestines hanging up on some of the meat counters.

A lovely seafood lunch with squid ink spaghetti then grilled swordfish and frito misto followed our visit to the impressive ruins of the Greek amphitheatre here. You also got to see some of the houses from the 19th century that were built above it. Sicily was a major part of the Greek empire and these are likely to be only the first of many sites we’ll see.

We were lucky with the weather and it was lovely and warm in the sun. Catania is supposed to be dominated by Etna which once destroyed it, but which remained once again elusive behind a bank of cloud. Getting a bus back to the campsite reminded us that it was All Souls Day – heavily celebrated here with visits to graves. It’s big business with a national holiday to help it along. Gigantic flower stalls are everywhere and buses are rerouted to run via the cemeteries.

We washed the salt spray off the van before we left the campsite and headed down the coast towards another major but smaller city – Siracusa. Finding a prime parking space beside the bridge onto Ortigia, the island of the old town, we strolled across just as it started to spit yet again. Walking around this old city in pouring rain didn’t stop us falling in love with its honey Cotswold coloured stone and pink rendered buildings. Surrounded by water on almost all sides (and actually quite a few of the streets were almost submerged on the day we were there!), there are narrow passages and hidden away squares, little gems of buildings everywhere. The cathedral is built into the remains of a Greek temple to Athena so has huge pillars down one side. We also saw the church of St Lucia, on the spot where she was martyred. There is a Caravaggio painting of her burial proudly on display here.

After sheltering in a pizzeria for lunch, we decided to head to the nearest campsite. Another deserted site – an Agriturismo…  a farm run site. We quickly dubbed it ‘Agriturismo wet field’ and ‘cold comfort farm’. It was neglected and overpriced. There was just one other encampment there – a local farmworker in a scruffy caravan whose dogs slept all night under our van out of the rain. We watched yet more DVDs and tried to plug the various leaks from the tailgate and keep our bedding dry. It was like so many wet 2cv camps in the UK, but without the high spirits. Just us all alone!

First thing next morning we awoke to a brighter day and gunfire. Lots of gunfire really rather close by. A chap was sitting on the stone wall of our field shooting. Vermin presumably. Luckily he was pointing his gun the other way.

We were sorry to leave Siracusa before we’d seen all there was to see, more Greek sites, and some rather tempting flat rentals. After our rather odd campsite and the bad weather, we just wanted out of the area for now. We decided to aim for Scarabeo, a site with a healthy ACSI card discount. We knew it was good as Neil and Jenny were there already! On the way we visited some of Sicily’s Baroque towns. Because much of this south-east area was destroyed by an earthquake in the 17th century, towns were rebuilt around the time that Baroque style was all the rage.

Noto is a small town with very grand buildings indeed. Several palaces and a huge duomo all in the honey coloured stone of the area. The dome is new though, the old one collapsed back in the 1990s. We climbed the bell tower of another church and generally enjoyed a pleasant wander round before moving on.

We visited Modica, although we’d sadly just missed its chocolate festival, we found a shop with tastings. The chocolate here is different, it is top quality but is made without cocoa butter so has a particularly crumbly grainy texture. Modica has some lovely buildings and we ate our late lunch at a panoramic viewpoint on the opposite hillside, amused by the antics of a lovely Boxer dog. His owner was keen to demonstrate how well trained the dog was, but the dog preferred the smell of our lunch.

The landscape around here is reminiscent of Derbyshire, rolling hills with a few cliffs and lots of dry stone walls. We drove on to Ragusa, another dramatically set Baroque town. Time was drawing on though and we decided to delay exploring, and head to our campsite on the coast before dark. We had a warm welcome from the friendly female owners of the site. It is a fabulous place, another lovely beach, and you get your own loo! It was also great to catch up with Neil and Jenny again. Although it had been less than a week since we last saw them, it felt a lot longer.

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Time off for a lazy beach holiday

Posted on November 4, 2011 by AdrianC

The long road south from Matera was probably not the most scintillating of the trip – the bits we could see through the weather looked good, anyway. At best murky and overcast, the rain broke one of our golden rules and pushed us onto the Autostrada for much of the way to Tropea.

Our only stop in Calabria, and in effect forming the cuticle of the toe-nail of Italy, the Tropea promontory is an odd mix – Tropea itself’s a lovely little town, seemingly very popular with German tourists, and there’s some fantastic countryside, but the expensive (and utterly empty) looking coastal villages around Capo Vaticano are mixed in with a lot of very scruffy and depopulated agricultural not-very-muchness. We only intended to do a one-nighter here, breaking the journey towards the boat for Sicily, but we ended up staying a week.

Costa Verde was a very pleasant site, right on one of the best beaches we’ve found for a long while, and with fantastic sunsets over the hazy silhouettes of the Aeolian islands. The sea itself was clean and clear – and (just about) warm enough that early morning swims were irresistable. The rental cabins on the site were buried behind lush tropical vegetation – as the bananas started to ripen, the foliage and flowers cast a shadow of scent across the site.

Fortunately, the same can’t be said of the sanitary facilities, despite the thankfully so-far-unique combination squat toilets and showers. No, really. Let’s just say that you did not want to drop the shower gel. There was, fortunately, one small hut in a corner, presumably nominally the disabled toilet, with a full set of (normal!) facilities. Some hot water might not have gone amiss, but that’s approaching fine detail.

It wasn’t even as if the weather was perfect. A couple of the days were damp and overcast, culminating in the ultimate meteorological jinx – we hung two loads of washing out to dry… After a night spent with the van hung full of damp clothes, fortunately blue skies returned. However, our renewed social lives seemed to continue apace – on arrival, we spotted Jonathan and Heather’s van, last seen in the snows of Abruzzo – their week of sea Kayaking was coming to an end, and they were heading North from here. Another set of Brits, Julie and Norman, were in a tent next to our sea-front pitch – taking a break from Julie’s smallholding and holiday cottage in Cornwall, their tent was a bit of a change from their usual more luxurious holiday choices, but they seemed to be enjoying it – despite our shared evening drinkie ending in us zipping in to the tent porch due to the rain hammering down… When Neil & Jenny arrived, they discovered the hard way exactly why the site is in the various camping guides as suitable for vehicles a maximum of 7.5m long. The steep, narrow hairpins of the entrance road forced them to do a few three-point turns in their near-on 8m long van, seemingly the front end of a Fiat Ducato mated to a tube train carriage.

After that experience, it would have been churlish of us not to help them recover by sharing drinks, ad-hoc communal cooking and stories of their eight months (so far) on the road, late into the night on several occasions. (We’re a bad influence, apparently. I’m not convinced much of an influence was needed – especially on Neil’s birthday.)

Few campsites, it would appear, are complete without a set of semi-itinerant cats, but this one excelled. At least eleven in total, there was rarely a moment when at least two or three weren’t sat around our pitch. In the pitch next to us, Nadine and Christian seemed to be even bigger cat-magnets than us. Maybe it was the occasional sneaky feeding, or maybe the cats were just enjoying unchallenged possession of the dog bed put out for their utterly unruffled Shih-tzu cross.

The real highlight of the stay, though, was a boat trip out to the Aeolian islands – unfortunately, the waves were a bit wobbly to allow us to land on Stromboli, but as we passed around the island, the Sciara del Fuoco lava stream steamed and smoked from the crater towards the sea.

Quite why people live on a tiny island which consists only of a perpetually-erupting volcano, I’m not sure, but they do – populating the lower slopes in several places. We’re assured that the eruptions never threaten the villages, but rather them than us. Must be something to do with the islands being fantastically beautiful, I s’pose?

A couple of hours were happily spent wandering around the main town on Lipari, the cathedral (with wonderfully atmospheric Norman cloisters) and the remains of a castle perched high above the old town and smaller harbour.

After Lipari, a stop-off on Vulcano. If we’d fancied trying the volcanic mud bathes, then the evil sulphuric odour which greeted us a distance away would have utterly dissuaded us. It lingers, apparently, for days after your wallow… For the return trip to the mainland, Ellie managed to be one of the first onto the boat, and grabbed the prime outside seats at the back. Years of experience at grabbing the last seat on a crowded Met line train, probably. A great place to watch the islands recede above the wake, as the sun gently sank towards the horizon and the spray gave us a thin crusting of salt.

And so, finally, we headed for Villa San Giovanni, on the edge of the city of Reggio di Calabria, for the ferry across the straits to Sicily.

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Getting sassi in Matera

Posted on October 27, 2011 by EllieGee

After Paestum we planned to go to the city of Matera following an enthusiastic recommendation from our Texan friends, Virginia and Zac. Luckily for us it is one of the few places in Southern Italy with a campsite open at this time of year. The road there wasn’t straightforward – a long cross country route beset by lack of signage, road closures, renumberings and chunks missing. The wild and sparsely inhabited landscape as we crossed from the province of Campania into Basilicata made up for the extra 60km added to our day. The Via Appia route across the ridges with a view of Matera in the distance was thrilling.

We pulled into a chilly campsite – a glorified carpark run by the local ‘agriturismo’ farm/restaurant – to a warm welcome from two sets of Brits. Sheena and Brian were tired from their journey from Corfu to Bari, but Scottish/German pair Stacey and Frank invited us to join them for drinks. Together with their one year old son Quinn, they have, like us, been on the road since May. They took three whole weeks from deciding to go travelling to actually leaving. This included buying their caravan and then rebuilding it, all with their small boy in tow.

Next morning, after waving Stacey, Frank and Quinn off, we got the free shuttle bus to the centre of Matera with Brian and Sheena. Matera sits above and into a deep gorge and has a unique heritage in its Sassi areas – dwellings hewn out of the hillside in layers. These areas of the town were populated from ancient times up until the 1950s and 60s, when they were considered slums and the people were forcibly rehoused in new accommodation on the edge of town using post-War Marshall Plan money. Since then the Sassi have been cleaned up and declared a World Heritage site. They have been repopulated to some extent and many are still in the throes of being done up.

It’s an intriguing place to explore – passages up and down steep inclines, and views across town from all angles. We visited a reconstructed interior of a sasso dwelling giving a snapshot of life as it was, on three levels going deeper into the rock, the family would have lived here together with their livestock.

We were also able to enter some abandoned sassi. What held us most in awe though were the chiese rupestri – the churches within the rock. Some with remains of frescoes going back to the 13th and 14th centuries. We also went inside one of the water cisterns – a huge tank that collected and stored surface water for the Sassi dwellers to use.

We spent a wonderfully meandery couple of days walking around exploring the Sassi and other parts of town with our new friends, punctuated by beers in the warm sunshine at outside cafes, or shared wine and pizza at our haunt in Piazza Sedile to the sound of students practising at the music college on the corner.

Matera does have tourists, but it is much quieter than so many of the other places we’ve visited and it was pleasing to have so much of it to ourselves. We enjoyed the atmosphere and vibe – another place to put on our ‘want to return and spend more time here’ list.

Brian and Sheena have recently retired and are on a long trip partly revisiting some of the places they lived in the hippy 70s – working in Greece and living on the beach, grape picking in Northern Italy – they lived the dream and had marvellous stories to tell. They also turned out to have owned several 2cvs in the past. Sheena semi-adopted one of the timid at first farm kittens who we named Maria. After Sheena had fed her for a couple of days, the tabby and white mog got rather cheeky and persistent. We ate together every night we were there culminating in a barbeque and campfire until the early hours on the last night. They insisted we help them with their twenty litre wine box … and we can’t let friends down. We look forward to catching up with them in the future.

After five months on the road now, the last couple of weeks has been more social than the rest of the trip put together, excluding the time spent at the 2cv World Meeting and staying with friends. There are fewer people on the road now, and those that are out here are travelling for longer and for similar reasons to us. With fewer campsites open there’s the necessary swapping of information for those heading north and south. It’s good to meet so many lovely people on the same wavelength and it has shown us how much we’ve missed the social aspect that we had expected to find at the beginning of the trip. We seem to be making up for lost time now.

Posted in Art & Culture stuff, By Country - Italy, Personal stuff, Travel stuff, Wildlife stuff | 1 Comment

Paestum

Posted on October 27, 2011 by AdrianC

Ellie’s already mentioned that all of Italy seems to take a quick look at the calendar, rather than the weather forecast, before getting dressed in the morning – further proof of that came on the road towards Paestum. You know it’s officially late autumn when even the roadside hookers are wearing thick, heavy clothing… Sunday afternoons seem to be prime-time, as that’s provided both of the occasions we’ve spotted them out in force on this trip.

Anyway, Paestum. It’s another set of old ruins, basically. Colonised by the Greeks, the city lasted about 1500 years before being abandoned to the malarial mosquitos which plagued the flat swampland around here, just over a thousand years ago. It’s now fertile plain, with herds of Buffalo grazing, producing the milk for Mozzarella. Surrounded by not very much, apart from some slightly scruffy beach resorts, the ruins of the city are mainly just foundations now. The one exception to that is the set of three temples – to Hera, Neptune and Ceres – which are amongst the best-preserved Doric temples in the world.

Those resorts are virtually all closed for the winter by now – we found the one campsite that wasn’t quite closed up yet, and enjoyed a fantastic sunset. As the sun sank into the waves, the outline of the Amalfi coast was just about visible from the sands right next to our pitch in the middle of yet another grove of freshly harvested and trimmed olive trees. Lovely.

However, since it was a Monday, the campsite people told us that the ruins would be closed. We thought we’d have a swing by anyway – and found it open (although not the museum). Even so, once we took one quick look, we didn’t actually bother paying to enter the site. The temples are so large, so close, and so visible that there didn’t seem much point…

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Coasting to Amalfi and beyond

Posted on October 27, 2011 by EllieGee

The weather broke the day we left Pompei and the heavens opened. We weren’t going far, just 20km along the coast but away from the run down urban edge that surrounds Pompei. Having stocked up at the nearby supermarket, we headed towards Vico Equense to a small campsite by a marina, to sit out the weather in the hope that it would improve for us to drive the famous Amalfi coast the next day. The site felt a bit dark and dingy with heavy skies and olive and walnut trees casting plenty of shade. The olive trees were in the throws of being trimmed and branches were piled up everywhere. The ground was smattered with the walnuts about to be gathered in. Both activities halted by the weather.

We looked forward to the rest of the day cooped up in the van, catching up on blogging and maybe watching a dvd. As it turned out, we spotted that our Dutch neighbours from the Pompei campsite were here too and although we’d only exchanged greetings at Pompei, I got chatting with Marleen in the loos and they invited us into their large cosy campervan for some wine. Maikko and Marleen have also been on a long career break trip around Europe and as we swapped stories and experiences, wine turned into dinner and more wine, and the rain was forgotten. They had parked under a walnut tree though, and gusts of wind brought the alarming thundery thud of walnuts down on their roof at regular intervals – we wonder just how dented the roof is now.

Vico Equense with Vesuvius in the background

Luckily, the next day dawned fine and we said our goodbyes to our new friends and took the road through the seaside resort of Sorrento. Then west towards the Punta Campanella at one end of Sorrento’s peninsula. We saw a sign for a panoramic view and set off on foot expecting it only to be a couple of hundred metres away. Two hours later and we’d had a good leg stretch up and down hill along the coast right to the tip with spectacular views of Capri.

Capri

We then drove along the ridge above Sorrento with views across the sweep of the Bay of Naples to the city and Vesuvius, and round the next corner we could see the sea on the other side and the start of the Amalfi coastline proper.

It is one of the world’s most spectacular drives, but the traffic was crazy. Luckily it wasn’t as busy as it could have been, as we saw plenty of near-misses. The road wasn’t as scary, precarious or as narrow as we thought it might be. Steep cliffs rise high above and towns climb up at all angles. On this first afternoon, we got as far as Amalfi, but felt we wouldn’t do the route justice in just half a day. We had a wander around the town – very picturesque and suitably touristy. Judging by the bodyguard types around, one of the many celebrities that flock here must have been in town.

Amalfi harbour

We drove back along the road westwards again to find a campsite near Massa Lubrense. A quiet place with a sea view beneath an ancient tower.

Next morning sitting having breakfast in the sun looking at our view, we noticed the German lady in the big camper parked nearby coming out of her door with her hair emaculately prepared in rollers with a scarf around her head. She then placed what looked like a large inflatable hat on her head and plugged this portable hair salon style contraption in and sat herself in the sun with her feet up. Strange things people do at campsites…

Amalfi coastline with Positano

The coastline was tremendous in the morning light and we had a leisurely Sunday drive, stopping to take pictures here and there. We turned off after Amalfi and took a hairpinned traffic lighted route up the mountain to Ravello. A charming town with many vistas of the coast, we enjoyed exploring the narrow passage ways. We felt rather underdressed. It was sunny but with a chill breeze and you could pick out foreigners, especially the Brits, a mile off. We were the ones still in light summer clothing, while we saw Italians in heavy winter coats, woolly hats and scarves. If it gets any colder, they really won’t feel the benefit.

At the end of one passage way we came to Villa Cimbrone, which was a rundown estate when discovered by William Ernest Beckett, Lord Grimthorpe, in 1904. A grand tourist connected with the Bloomsbury set, Beckett brought it back to life and created English style gardens on this Italian hilltop. English gardens don’t tend to have much in the way of colour in October, but the high infinity terrace lined with statuary was heavenly, and it was what we spotted when we leant over the railing that really made our day complete.

We saw a small tiled balcony just below us with a couple of glasses and a bowl of nibbles on the ledge. There was somehow a bar below us. We immediately sniffed it out – most of the tables were on the lawn, but we found the balcony and it had just been vacated. This had to be the most perfect spot for a drink in Europe, if not the world, and we had it all to ourselves. Two large glasses of wine and huge bowls of olives and nuts and we were in paradise. It was a sun trap too and we basked as we drank in the wine and one of the best views ever. This wonderful Sunday interlude makes its way well into the top ten highlights of the trip so far.

We did eventually drag ourselves away so that someone else could have a turn and returned to the coast road once more. The drama of the Amalfi coast peters out as you near the port city of Salerno, and the landscape south of the city is flat, scruffy and uninspiring, but it would have a tough act to follow.

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Header pic archive

Posted on October 24, 2011 by AdrianC

We were thinking the other day about the header pics we’ve been using on the site. When we first started travelling, we found it difficult to take pics that looked good in the very narrow format (940 x 198 pixels, 4.75:1) that the blog’s design requires – but that’s got easier over time, meaning we can vary it more often.

The downside with that, though, is that the pics are gone once they’re gone. That seemed a bit of a shame, and a waste – so we’ve done a page on the site with all the ones we’ve used so far.

Just click on the “Header pics” link just underneath the current header, and you’re there!

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