Warm again this morning and sunny. The views were much better and we could make out towns on Sicily.
Having no bread, we were just about to sit down to cereal for breakfast when Jane heard a shout of “Pane” from outside. Sure enough there was the local baker's van, rather surprising given that there were only two vans in the campsite! The bread was that tasty long load with a hard crust. Jane decided to cut it and, aware that it would be difficult, attacked it with vigour. An expletive, mild of course, escaped from Jane's mouth as the knife slipped and she carved her finger. I was sent to find the plasters in amongst our extensive medical supplies and found it in the last of three containers. Fortunately, the patient hadn't lost too much blood so I was able to apply the plaster and continue cutting the bread without further mishap.
It is olive picking time in this area and many olive groves, including the one in the campsite, have nets spread under the trees and white plastic bags full of collected olives scattered around on the nets.
We drove for an hour to reach Villa San Giovani, the port from which we caught the ferry to Sicily. The cloud was building and the area that we were heading for looked decidedly dark. The crossing is very quick (20 minutes for €60 return) and we were soon driving off to brave the Messina traffic on the way to the pay motorway. The motorway was quiet and the driving easy. Soon after leaving the city we started to see evidence of the catastrophic floods that hit the area with considerable loss of life. Tunnels were reduced to a single lane and the brown stains on the road showed that they had been covered with mud. Every dry gulley had either been recently cleared or workers with diggers and bulldozers were working on them. In one place wrecked cars were still upended in the mud and in another the wrecks were lined up in the school car park. Further on we passed vast dry river beds – very wide and shallow but designed to take very large amounts of water. These obvious coped with the floods whereas those closer to Messina were much steeper and narrow – unable to cope with the continuous torrential rain.
The Michelin map showed the non-motorway route from Fiumefreddo in green (picturesque) whereas the motorway lost that status. We decided to leave the motorway and follow the picturesque route – a mistake. All I can say is that the person who decided that this section of road was 'picturesque' has very poor taste! The road is almost entirely urban with one run-down, uninteresting town following another, and it was very busy leading to tortuous driving. If you are doing this trip, stay on the motorway.
We headed for Acireale and 'International Camping La Timpa' and found it quite pleasant. We chose a pitch overlooking the sea again but this time the sea was crashing onto the rocks directly below. The rocks here are all volcanic, the outflow from Etna which we are close to, so there is no beach just slabs of lava that provide an area for swimming from. The campsite even has a private lift that takes customers down through the rock to the platform. I tried to use it but it wouldn't respond to the buttons, probably because the sea was too rough and the platform too dangerous. It certainly wasn't the time to be swimming or sunbathing there!
We walked down to the harbour of Santa Maria La Scala just below the campsite. The boats were quite attractive but the village is somewhat scruffy, like most of the towns that we passed on the journey. In fact we both agreed that we were struggling to see the attractive Sicily that we had expected.
Photos: The view from Henrietta of the volcanic rock ledge that forms Camping La Timpa's 'beach'; Moving a boat by committee; Santa Maria La Scala FC playing by the harbour.
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