13 March 2024 – Coastal walk

Miles driven today = 0

Total Miles to date = 2,319

When we got to El Bahira yesterday it didn’t take long  to decide that we would be staying on here for a second night.  One thing we haven’t done enough of on this trip so far is to just pop on our walking shoes and head off into the countryside.  We spotted that there is a footpath which traces the shoreline around the Bay so this morning we decided to follow it.

The brooding bulk of Monte Cofano is omnipresent at the far end of the Bay.  The whole mountain is a nature reserve.

There were carpets of spring flowers in a rainbow of different colours.

This escarpment which runs along the back of the campsite appears to be very popular with climbers.

The jagged rocks make the shoreline virtually inaccessible in a lot of places.

What a great place to spend the day fishing.

As always, we managed to find a few rockpools to explore.

I’ve no idea how many photos I took trying to capture the surf.  This is one of the better efforts.

After more than 2 miles of walking we finally managed to find a sandy stretch of beach.

Lisa got her shoes and socks off and went for a quick paddle.  You can tell from the expression it was a bit cooler than she was expecting.

From what I can gather, wild camping is illegal in Italy but generally overlooked during the off season when car parks aren’t required by anybody else and we’ve already had a few freebie nights ourselves.  We noticed these guys all parked up together while we were driving in yesterday.  What a great place to spend the night.

We sat on a rock and scoffed our butties before retracing our steps back to camp.

The rest of the day has mainly been spent sitting in the Sun and enjoying doing very little for a change.   We got the barbecue out again to cook up some chicken thighs and then headed back down to the beach for sunset.

In the distance you can see the outlines of the Egadi Islands.  We’ll hopefully get a better look at them from Trapani either tomorrow or the following day but first we plan to head up to the hilltop town of Erice.

14 March 2024 - Erice