Two Go To Sicily

[Glandwr]

Hmm, yes. We have indeed deliberately avoided Palermo. Not because of the traffic skirmish yesterday, more because we tend to avoid cities. This is partly because of Charlie and also a preference for more countryfied (?) surroundings.

And the history of Sicily is indeed rich. I still find it extraordinary the Normans came here - and they had come from Scandinavia originally of course. The scenery the Jumars have been enjoying was not enough to hold them.

But we probably should have found time to see the Palatine Chapel.

I can see that. I have always lived in the country and find cities, expecially historic ones fascinating.

 

[DBK]

Loving your updates and the pictures. We spent a wonderful winter in Sicily and your pictures are a real trip down memory lane for me. Thank you. Enjoy San Vito lo Capo. It was blowing an absolute hoolie when we were there last!

It would have been very blowy here yesterday. The sea is still a bit cloudy from the rough weather. But the forecast is much better, mid to upperish twenties for the next ten days according to the weather forecast. And light winds.

 

[andy63]

I'm enjoying your thread...and loving your photos..
I've never been to italy or sicily... I hope one day I make it ..
Thanks...
Andy.

 

[Lenny HB]

The potholes of Italy are also to blame for why I thought my dash cam was playing up. The card was saying it was full and upon investigation I found it full of protected files. The camera has a g sensor and when I hit a pothole it thought we had had an accident and protected that clip of video. The number of potholes in Italy exceeds my 32Mb SD card! I've now turned the sensor off but may try it on a lower sensitivity later.

Had the same problem in Belgium a few weeks ago had to set mine to low sensitivity.

 

[DBK]

I've had a lazy day today, though Mrs DBK has been very busy with a mega-laundry wash, doing all the bedding etc. I did put up the washing line for her though.

And I did a pudding for lunch.

Prickly Pear fruit!

As you can see we cheated and bought them pre-packed. You can harvest them yourself and this seems to be their season but buying them like this they are mostly free of spines and can be handled with bare hands providing you are careful.

All you need to prepare them is a chopping board, sharp knife and a fork.

Then chop the ends off.

Make a shallow slice down the length of the fruit and with the fork start to remove the skin.

When all the skin is removed you are left with something like this.

Eat with a spoon or fork and a knife to cut bits off. It tastes somewhat like watermelon and like watermelon is full of pips. Unlike watermelon the pips are tiny, much smaller than grape pips and are eaten with the flesh of the fruit.

You can, if you have the kit, make juice out of them but you must still peel them first.

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[hilldweller]

I'm enjoying your thread...and loving your photos..
I've never been to italy or sicily... I hope one day I make it ..
Thanks...
Andy.

It's not at all far. Calais to Garda is only 750 miles and an easy two stop journey.

What are you waiting for ?

 

[hilldweller]

When all the skin is removed you are left with something like this.

Are you sure that's not a sanitary towel ?

 

[andy63]

Prickly Pear fruit

I think that's what I was eating in Spain duties a walk in the hills
Found them growing on a cactus type plant..
Very prickly as you say.. if memory serves me right we rolled them about in the sand and gravel of a river bed to remove the prickles before attempting to cut them and eat..
Worth the effort ...they were very nice...
Andy.

 

[andy63]

It's not at all far. Calais to Garda is only 750 miles and an easy two stop journey.

What are you waiting for ?

Put like that,,
but it's most probably as far again to sicily .

 

[DBK]

It's not at all far. Calais to Garda is only 750 miles and an easy two stop journey.

What are you waiting for ?

I agree, northern Italy is very accessible and Tuscany not much further. But Garda is barely halfway to Sicily so to make the journey worthwhile you do need a bit of time, unless you are happy putting in very long hours driving every day.

Put like that,,
but it's most probably as far again to sicily .

Indeed it is.

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[hilldweller]

But Garda is barely halfway to Sicily

But it's plenty far enough for a newbie to Italy.

We've been going to Italy for 20 odd years but not yet got further south than Sorrento. One day, maybe, you have posted some very encouraging photos.

 

[DBK]

There are some big rocks just behind the campsite and I took Charlie for a leg stretch along the road below them this afternoon. Yet again I forgot my binoculars so the two birds I saw soaring over them will remain a mystery. On a balance of probabilities they were probably griffon vultures but they might also have been golden eagles or just perhaps (dare to dream) bonnelli's eagles, which are rare but the national reserve just to the south of us (behind the rocks) is known to have bonnelli's.

Another mystery unresolved. But the rocks are impressive. The cliff is nearly 400m high according to the map. The tooth shaped bit just off to the left of centre is a stand alone pillar, separate from the rest of the cliff.

Almost impossible to see no doubt but on the extreme right of the picture where the cliff tapers off is one of the many limestone quarries this region has. Not much signs of activity from it. You would think the mafia would be knocking down old building to generate some trade.

 

[DBK]

As I hinted at earlier we have returned to Castellammare del Golfo. It isn't really much out of our way to back track. Capo Vito is a dead-end road so you have to come back from it anyway in order to pick up the coast road.

Our aim was to have a fishy lunch and we found somewhere in the harbour to have it. La Cambusa restaurant is graded number 7 out of 50 on TripAdvisor and the location was perfect.

In the picture above there are two pontoons on the far side of the harbour. The restaurant is on the quayside beyond the left one.

Starter for me was calamaricci fritti or fried baby squid. Mrs DBK had a prawn cocktail - they are becoming fashionable again I think.

The menu had both a first and second fish course option to follow the starters but we just opted for the second course - grilled swordfish steaks with grilled vegetables.

Swordfish is a Sicilian favourite but we weren't over-impressed by it. We had a tuna steak in Tarifa which was much nicer and I fear the swordfish wasn't fresh but had been frozen - it was a touch dry.

For puds Mrs DBK had seasonal fruit in a sort of syrup. I had a parfait with pistachios - that's the green gunk poured over it.

The parfait is a sort of squidgy meringue.

We staggered back to the van after a little over an hour and half of chomping. The service was very good - delightfully unhurried, just as we like it, giving us time to digest and quietly ferment between courses.

We are staying in a commercial sosta in the town tonight. First impressions are it isn't very good but it will do for one night.

More ruins tomorrow.

 

[DBK]

I do try and research some of the places we intend to visit, but today the research failed as I didn't know what a Cyclopean wall was. Ho hum, live and learn.

Today's objective was Erice, pronounced I think "ayreechay" or something like that - but don't trust someone who can't recognise a Cyclopean wall.

Erice, irrespective of pronunciation which is oblivious to geography of course, is perched on a hill near the western end of Sicily.

It is famous for its blasted walls.

But before we get to the wretched walls (grr... ) the location of the town has not been unnoticed by the motorsport brigade. Here is a Google map view of Erice from about 6" above my tablet screen

Erice is just above the centre of the picture, on top of the hill. We started on the right, where you can see "Campo la Braceria" on the map. The road then wiggles delightfully up the hill to Erice. As an aside we left Erice by the road going off to the left of the map. This is less wiggly and less steep which is probably why we saw, several cyclists coming up this way.

The road up we found was obviously prepared for some sort of race. The corners were protected by tyres and every hairpin had signs showing the distance to the next bend, 150, 100 and 50.

All is explained here.

And in a video :



But it was quiet today (Friday), I suspect it all takes off tomorrow.

But back to wall hunting. As you ascend the hill, and you can only sense when you are near the top, as there are few visual clues, you come to a bend with a road going off to the left with signs saying parking for buses and "autocaravanes". Take this and unlike us drive to the very end where there is a gravel space to park and from what we saw today the opportunity to wild camp. We parked under trees before this which was right for us as we planned to leave Charlie in the van - we are well used to his dislike of hot dry streets.

Viewed closer, Erice is triangular in shape.

We entered by walking to the end of the bus parking road at the Porta Spada.

So named (spada means sword) because numerous prisoners were put to death by the sword here in the 13th century during a Sicilian revolt known as the Sicilian Vespers. Happy times.

And the image above hints at my undoing. I had somehow formed the impression "Cyclopean walls" meant big stones with smaller stones on top. Precisely what the photograph show.

Hmm, wrong. Cyclopean walls are something very different. They are found all around the World but are named from Mycenaean (Greekish types) architecture from around 1600 to 1100 BC.

It consists of massive limestone boulders fitted closely together without mortar. The stones show little signs of being worked.

Not what you can see in my picture above. Only one of my shots, by accident, shows the Cyclopean walls.

And that's them at the bottom. Rough boulders lying on the bed rock with the worked storm es of a later period on top of them.

How old are they? I'm not sure, they are of Phoenecian originan and so perhaps somewhere between 1500 BC to 500 AD. Quite old. And well hidden.

Erice was worth an explore though we didn't see all of it. The "modern" walls which remain are impressive.

There is a wide walkway inside the walls. Note the patterns in the cobbles. They get better nearer the town.

There was a small church just inside the Porta Spada. More impressive stonework.

In the same church was a striking tomb. Note the skull and cross bones and the colours for something one year short of three hundred years old.

But the main church is the Chiesa Madre, which somehow lacks a homely feel. "Austere" is the word in the guidebook.

The window above the entrance (there may be a more architecturally correct term) showed extraordinary fine carving.

There are the usual old doors.

The streets have remarkable patterns created in them.

There is more to Erice, the remains of a Norman castle and a picturesque hunting lodge but they will have to wait for another visit.

 

[Minxy]

I just read the title as "Two get sticky!" ... obviously got my fig jam on the brain!

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[DBK]

I just read the title as "Two get sticky!" ... obviously got my fig jam on the brain!

It has been warm and sticky at night at times though.

 

[DBK]

We have turned the corner, so to speak, and are now travelling down Sicily's south coast.

We are at Camping Helios, which isn't in the ACSI book but is well positioned for a trip to Selinunte, a site described in our guidebook as "amongst the most striking archaeological sites in the Mediterranean". Or perhaps just a place with more tumbled down old stones than anywhere else. We will visit it on Monday and probably mount an expedition into the interior of Sicily in the afternoon.

This site is immediately behind a nice sandy beach. This is the view twenty paces from the van. The couple on the beach are about our age and are flying a kite. We must get one!

The site is also full of Germans with a lone Austrian, almost all in VW campers of various ages. The place must listed by some German club I guess, as it isn't in ACSI.

The humidity this evening was very high but the temperature has fallen a bit. The forecast threatened thunder but it doesn't seem to be coming now.

The middle readings show the outside conditions earlier this evening. The bottom line is time and date - which are not set.

I posted this image in the photo of the day thread. It's just a few yards from where we are - a pop-up hearse conversion in Imperial Purple.

 

[RidersofRohan]

The words pop up hearse just sound so wrong.

 

[DBK]

I just read the title as "Two get sticky!" ... obviously got my fig jam on the brain!

The joy you can derive from a ripe fig has been a revelation on this trip. I've never been that impressed by them but that was because I must have never eaten one before which was ripened in the sun somewhere hot. They are delicious.

 

[Viennese]

Italian fig jam is unbelievable. Remember it from a school trip years ago. The stuff you buy in UK is just not the same...

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[Robert Clark]

Without wishing to lower the tone of the thread.
I found these online...

 

[DBK]

I think the one here is more tasteful. But the top one reminds me of the Hornby mail coach - which collected and dropped little mail bags as the train moved. Makes me wonder if there is a "drive-by mortuary" somewhere in the US?

 

[hilldweller]

The stuff you buy in UK is just not the same...

Figuratively speaking.

 

[DBK]

There is a lot to see on the south coast of Sicily and one of the most interesting sites, alongside the Valley of the Temples which we will visit later this week, is Selinunte, the most westerly Greek colony in Sicily. Founded in 628 BC (probably) the citizens soon came into contact with the non-Greek people of Segesta, which we have already visited. Relations between the two cities were not good and intermittent hostilities lasted for well over a century until the Segestans played their joker and appealed to Carthage for help. In 409 BC the Carthaginians rocked up with a force of 100,000 men! Most of the population of Selinunte were executed although a few escaped including (possibly - if they were smart) the workers from the local quarry - more of which later.

The site today is a shambles, to put it politely. An earthquake in Medieval times flattened whatever was left. Restoration or to use a posh term “anastylosis” has been carried out on a couple of temples, one less successfully than the other.

I shall try and describe what we saw in more detail in The Book, should it eventually be finished but for the moment here are just a selection of shots of old stones.

Here is your intrepid correspondent. Please note, those who might make crude comments that is a lens in my pocket.

Selinunte has two main sites, the east and the west. Here is the east.

The temple was reconstructed in the 60s (from memory) and it has been well done. The reconstructed bits are not meant to fool the observer but they blend in well.

Behind this temple are the remains of two further temples, one of which when standing was one of the largest temples in the Mediterranean at that time.

Today the site looks like this.

If they ever find the early IKEA assembly instructions they should be able to put it back together. More "flattened" than "flat pack".

The stones are massive. This is the upturned top of a column and must be twelve feet square at least

Fortunately, Montalbano turned up just in time to give scale to this bit of a column.

The west site is built on top of a mound surrounded by walls.

This has been "less successfully" restored.

The bits above, a capital I think and a bit of column, have been "staged" or posed on other stones to display them.

The work started in the late Twenties so it would be wrong to criticise from this distance. I am sure they thought it was right at the time.

After two hours under the sun we needed an ice-cream.

Someone complained it was "too cold". Hrrmph....

 

[WillinFrance]

Enjoying reading your adventure/trip report and the photo's are fantastic.
Looking forward to the book when it's complete and published.
We managed Lake Garda this year and really enjoyed Italy.

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[DBK]

But to me the most atmospheric of the two sites we visited today wasn't the well known Selinunte but the much less well known, Cave di Cusa. This is the site of the quarry where the stones were extracted to build Selinunte, 11 km away. It must have been a thriving quarry until one day in 409 BC when news came of the massive force of Carthaginians approaching, led by Hannibal Mago. (No, not the one with the elephants who crossed the Alps, he was 200 years later.

The quarry workers’ reaction to the news was to flee, wisely given what happened to the citizens of Selinunte. Hopefully they didn't flee back to their loved ones at Selinunte because that wouldn't have worked out well.

But their actions, whatever the sad ending, left the quarry exactly as it was on that day, less a couple of thousand years or more of weathering of course.

It was probable a limestone escarpment overlooking what are now square kilometres of olive trees. This is a big olive oil producing area. In the sense they produce a lot of olive oil. The olives on the wild trees on the site were tiny - lack of water no doubt following this summer's drought and heat.

We arrived at about one o'clock and found the ticket office closed. "You can go in" a lady having lunch told me. Obviously not on commission. Italy is growing on me.

I don't think the entrance charge would have been much even had we been required to pay it. It was only €6 at Selinunte, although you could spend at least the same again if you wanted to have a golf buggy tour - and there was an audio guide too - which you downloaded to your phone from the notices I saw - clever.

The beginning of the quarry looks, well, a bit quarry-like.

But as you go in further you come to the magical area where they cut the columns.

The above is a small one but you can see from it the technique they used. First level a bit of rock then cut two thin channels. The bit of rock in between these grooves would then have been knocked out with blunt instruments.

Keep cutting this groove downwards, it is wide enough for a man to work in - or take a picture. The column is on the right in the picture above.

.

When you have gone deep enough knock out the rock on one side and remove your section of column. The bit above is massive, fifteen feet in diameter if an inch.

How they released it must have been a massive challenge. One account says they used metal tools (bronze?) to undercut the rock then lever it free.

It is believed the rocks may then have been wrapped in timber and rolled to Selinunte with oxen power to assist.

Well worth a visit - even if you have to pay.

 

[DBK]

After several days in the same place - and swimming in the sea twice a day - we will be on the move tomorrow. More ruins to see on the way then somewhere to stay for a visit to the Valley of the Temples on Thursday

The beach here has some tiny sand dunes which are not as lifeless as they might appear at first glance.

Beetle tracks:

Lizard tracks (note the line left by its tail):

And something in flower - a relatively rare sight at this time of year. The Sea Lily or Sea Daffodil, Pancratium maritimum.

If we ever come back to Sicily it would have to be in the Spring. This western part of the island is all limestone so the flowers, especially orchids, should be impressive at that time of year. Though we would probably need to be here in February at the latest.

 

[Coastal Cruiser.]

Where is Charlie lately, is he allowed in the sites you visited?
Or have you posted him back home

 

[DBK]

Where is Charlie lately, is he allowed in the sites you visited?
Or have you posted him back home

No, he's still here - making friends with the local cats.

We took him swimming this afternoon. The sea is very shallow here and you can't really go out of your depth unless you go a very long way out, which we don't . As we waded in, he, with his little legs, got out of his depth very quickly. He kept up with us for a while but decided returning to shore was a wiser move. He then stayed in the shallows and barked at us until we came back.

 

[DBK]

We continued our way down the south coast today, ending up a Agrigento in order to visit the Valley of the Temples tomorrow. We are staying at the aptly named Valle dei Templi campsite a few kilometres from the temples. There is a highly rated aire not far away but a report on CamperContact dated last week said it was closed while the owners went on holiday. It may be open this week but some reviews complained of traffic noise so we came here instead. The cost difference is only €2 so that wasn't a factor. It would be a lot more expensive here but we have a "Sicily Camping Tour" card which we were given free at an earlier site and which lets you pay €17 a night compared to the full rate, which is about €25 here.

But it wasn't too quiet here this afternoon because for nearly two hours we had a seaplane flying low overhead! Sadly too low (behind the trees) for a decent photograph but it was an interesting twin engined aircraft.

I wondered if it was for putting out fires and it turned out it was. On one pass I distinctly, but very briefly, saw it dropping water about a kilometre away. Then I smelt burning! The smell might have been, and probably was, someone locally burning rubbish but it did make me think what we would do if flames approached. The phrase "take steps, preferably large ones away from the danger" came to mind. Fortunately, we are surrounded, like the last place by Germans so I am sure they will organise something. Alternatively, their huge MHs will shield the flames from us as we escape.

We did a bit of ruin spotting today but it was a site for enthusiasts only I fear.

Eraclea Minoa is an old site, founded in the middle of the 6th Century BC and as all places like it here in Sicily, subsequently fought over by sundry local factions, Carthaginians, Arabs, Romans and Normans.

There isn't a lot to see here now.

Mostly just stumps of walls but it seems most of the city was like that originally. In a small covered exhibit there are the remains of a building which give a better idea what they looked like originally.

The construction seems to be a mud or clay wall built on top of the low stone walls. These remaining walls were probably covered in sand, which is why they have survived - although they do show signs of extensive renovation!

One site was completely covered in sand before it was excavated - the theatre. Sadly, the stones exposed were considered too fragile to expose to the Sicilian rain - so they built a roof over it.

But the coast here is more spectacular.

There is a pine forest just inland, part of which is a nature reserve. Water doesn't seem to be in short supply here, the Platani river certainly wasn't dry and we saw the signs of other water courses. I guess there must be springs producing the water from below the limestone mountains.

There is a little museum which is worth visiting. Some of the pottery was very finely crafted and decorated but I liked this head of Medusa the Gorgan.

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