4. Sicily - Hilltowns, Hiking and Home

covering 21 May to 29 May 2019

from the walls of Erice

yes, this car is parked and it isn't an unusual technique here

We were now heading up to the north west corner of Sicily with a couple of calls to make on the way.  We thought that the Trapani salt pans would be worth seeing but I was definitely underwhelmed by them.  The best I can say is that they were salty and flat although we did have a plate of chips, suitably sodium chlorided at the café.

windmill at the Trapani salt pans

Erice is described in Lonely Planet, not always the most accurate guidebook, as one of Italy’s most spectacular hilltowns and I cannot gainsay that.  It was indeed spectacular with wide ranging views over land and sea from the south side where the castle sits.  It isn’t possible to get any views of outside the town from most of the sinuous and tangled mass of narrow, mostly pedestrianised medieval streets.  It was just how you might imagine and just what you want a European hilltown to be like.  Nothing much appears to be level and it seems to sit on a huge rocky dome which you climb up to.  L Planet says it “sits on the legendary Mt Eryx” but I’m sure it was really there rather than just ‘legendary’.

We’re travelling with the previously mentioned Lonely Planet and an old Michelin Green Guide.   We like the Green Guides but they are sometimes very coy.  Describing the Mafia as a secret society it says “whose abiding rule is to defend its members to the extent of braving the law if need be” (my italics).  Erice, the town in the previous paragraph has a temple dedicated to Venus which had the custom of sacred temple prostitutes.  The Michelin guide merely says that the Temple of Venus was venerated by ancient mariners – well you know what sailors are like and I daresay it was more of an attraction than shooting Albatrosses. 

so would you buy here or hope you could get away with a short term let ?

I just liked them in with the purple flowers

At our campsite near San Vito Lo Capo up in that NW corner we fell into conversation with a Bavarian who had been in London last year in his motorhome.  He didn’t know about the London Low Emission Zone and got home to find a total of 1,500 Euros in fines for driving inside it.  He told us that his lawyer had sorted it out.  What he wanted to know was if we knew anything about ferries from Sicily to Northern Italy or France.  We had already booked ours from Palermo to Genoa but told him that a new service to Toulon had just started with an opening discount.  We’d been told by another German some days earlier.  After crossing the med. our Bavarian was headed for Bilbao in northern Spain to catch a ferry to England.   The next day we were having a pizza in the camp pizzeria with a half litre of red wine, really as much or possibly more than we would drink.  Then the waiter plonked another half litre in front of us and two tables away there was our Bavarian friend.  He’d booked the ferry at a good rate and this was his thank you.  So we now had half a pizza each and at least three quarters of a litre of red wine to finish.  We felt obliged to attempt this formidable target and you’ll just have to guess if we managed it.

collared dove, just like we get in England.  Many of
us probably don't notice just what a beautiful bird it is.

This was a lovely part of the island with some islands offshore (where else would they be ?), cliffs, what appeared to be a raised beach with good flowers on it and a walk through this lovely landscape into town about three miles away.  San Vito wasn’t too touristy and it had an expansive golden sandy beach.  After a coffee and cake outside a café we decided to return to the campsite on a different route along the raised beach behind the jumble of sharp and rough tumbled rocks that made up the beach proper.  It was a really good walk until the raised beach and the cliffs merged and we ended up clambering over a really difficult rocky beach for about a mile and a half.  It took us nearly two hours and we hardly dared look at anything other than our feet for most of it.

the really good bit of walking back

and near the end of the really rough bit, most had 
been over the more jagged black rocks behind

the coast near San Vito just by our campsite

  

and again

Quaking-grass seed heads 

One of the reasons we’d come up the to NW was the Zingaro Natural Reserve, Sicily’s oldest nature reserve.  We parked with a number of other vehicles where the road ran out, paid our entrance fee and walked along a lovely bit of undulating path with a whole colour chart of blues in the sea off to one side and the vegetation covered land rising steeply a little way inland from us.  The path was well maintained with boards describing rare plants along the way which unusually were really there and identifiable.   Rosemary-leaved Gromwell anyone ?   We had a three hour or so walk, one of the few times we’d managed one in all our time in Sicily because paths are so difficult to find.  There are signs pointing off the road sometimes but we had very little confidence that there’d be more signs later.  It is easy for those of us used to the Wonder of the World that is Britain’s footpath network to take it for granted.  I’m happy to be lyricling waxily about it.  There is nowhere else in the world we’ve ever visited with anything to match it for extent, variety, accessibility or signage (mostly).

looking along the walk we did in the Zingaro Reserve

breakfast nr Cefalu

and then Isnello in the mountains

A few days quiet time was spent at Cefalu on the north coast with less than perfect weather.  Clouds were swirling in the mountains when we drove inland but it did make it all very atmospheric.  Then it was apparently suddenly our last day and with a ferry in the evening we took a quick trip to see the cathedral at Monreale.  Lots of Byzantine influence and not like any other cathedral I’ve seen.  Mosaics everywhere depicting lots of bible stories plus one outrageously over-the-top Baroque chapel.  A really stunning interior with a very plain exterior.  The Norman rulers at the time were much taken with the cultured Arab lifestyle and William II (not England’s William Rufus), who had the cathedral built even had his own harem.



All these photos are in the Cathedral at Monreale

and two in the outrageous Baroque chapel with 
everything carved in marble, including the drapery

except for the two people who are only there for scale


Our visit to Sicily had been really good, we liked the island and the scenery, the people we met, the ruins and the hilltowns.  The wine and the fresh produce was cheap and good.  It wasn’t overly touristy but it was just such a very long way to drive to get to.  By catching a ferry back from Palermo to Genoa we halved our driving distance to England and when we looked at the fuel and toll road costs there wasn’t much between the two.  We were saving at least two long days of driving, so it was well worth doing.  The ferry was very smart and comfortable but the loading and unloading of vehicles was the sort of chaotic shambles that could only have been designed by a gifted expert.

a final landscape shot, heading west towards Palermo and our ferry

We found out a few days after we’d left Sicily that twenty four hours after we had actually left the island, Mount Etna erupted and we still haven’t decided if we’re sorry or relieved to have missed it.  Sorry, I think.


**** and that plant pictured in the last blog.  It's a Caper plant.  The pickled buds of which are often on pizza and the less frequently seen Caper Berries are the pickled seedheads.

warm glow anyone ?