Arrival in Sicily

We are on the mainland looking across the 8 miles of the Straights of Messina to Sicily. Our crossing is flat calm and takes less than half an hour. You can see our caravan in with the lorries. There are railway tracks laid on the floor of the ship for the transportation of trains across. A bridge has been debated for years as the channel is only 8 miles wide and preliminary works were even started but have since been suspended (indefinitely). I wonder who owns the ferry company?

 The ferry docks in Messina, and it takes us half an hour to negotiate the chaotic streets of the town to get onto the motorway less than 3 miles from the port. We have become accustomed to the cut-and-thrust of Italian driving and double parking, but this is something else. Here we have triple parking and vehicles weaving about dodgem style. That’s fine for the numerous scooters and Fiat 500’s, but a car and caravan rig is a bit limiting. 

But soon we are happily trundling along on the motorway, and pull in to the services to eat our lunchtime sandwiches. The services car park seems to be covered in small coal! Has a lorry shed its load?

 

 The answer, of course, lies immediately opposite the car park; it’s volcanic ash from Mount Etna, the most active volcano in Europe. I recalled hearing on the news 3 weeks previously that the motorway had been closed for a few hours due to a small eruption. Etna looks suitably majestic and menacing at the same time, the upper reaches of its lofty 10,900 feet being covered in snow at this time of the year.

We drove past the fuel pumps as we left the services and I thought, hmm, I wouldn’t be first in the queue to work at a petrol station opposite an active volcano.

Our first campsite here in Sicily is 60 miles farther south from Etna, in the south eastern corner, near the town of Avola. The last 400 yards from the main road into the site is the narrowest I’ve ever encountered, with a few dog-leg bends thrown in for good measure. Thank goodness we didn’t meet anything coming towards us. But the site itself is very pleasant, and right next to the beach. This is it on a brisk day, but on many days we have sat out comfortably in the sun in shirt sleeves. Big coats on when the sun goes down.

So we’ve really chilled out since our arrival: hence the delay in posting this blog, plus an intermittent wifi connection  A further reason is my cracked rib. I tripped backwards into a drainage channel on our first day here that resulted later in a visit to the local hospital on Christmas Eve.  The treatment there was very efficient once we got accepted into the system; first we had to gatecrash a mini Christmas party to get at the A & E staff on duty. X-rays showed a small cracked rib; nothing to worry about, but light duties for a while. The ascent of Etna will have to wait!