16 March 2024 – Recovery Day

Miles driven today = 0

Total Miles to date = 2,382

Today marks day 45 of my allowed 90 days in Schengen, so we are already half way through our maximum stay and have to start turning our attention towards our route back home.  When I put together my tentative plans for this trip I allowed for an additional 5 days to slot in whenever we felt the need to stay over an extra day here and there.  But the way things have panned out so far, we are currently bang on schedule and still have those 5 days in the bank.  Our latest allowed return date to the UK is 30th April but Lisa’s son Jack and his family arrive from Canada on the 8th of May so we really need to make sure we have enough time to get everything prepared in our newly extended house in Yorkshire for their arrival and we may therefore book our return crossing of the channel a few days earlier than we are legally allowed.

But having said all that we really needed to give ourselves a day off today.  Lisa has been a little under the weather with a cold and my joints really don’t like me very much at the moment.  I’ve had a dodgy right knee for years which is a legacy of all the marathon running I used to do when I was in my 30s.  But my hips and toes are also now showing signs of arthritis and regularly walking 15,000+ steps a day is starting to take its toll.  There were definitely a few winces of pain as we were wandering around Trapani yesterday.

So we decided to make today a recovery day, albeit that we were still up and about by 7 in order to get first dibs on the washing machine so we could make sure we got our towels and bedding laundered.  We’ve spent a small fortune on tumble dryers so far this trip so it was nice to be able to rig up a line and let everything dry au naturel. 

But what to do with the remainder of our day?  Lovely as the site here at Lilybeo Village is, there isn’t a huge amount to see or do either here or in the immediate vicinity.  But the nearest beach is only a 2 mile flat cycle ride away, so we decided to get the bikes out and have a gentle pedal down there.  It really wasn’t very much to write home about if I’m honest.  We could see the town of Marsala to the north and there were a couple of tumble down towers and dilapidated windmills but the beaches in this part of the World all appear to be very scruffy with the usual piles of discarded trash.

We pedaled on a way and both thought there was something wrong with our bikes when we heard a clanking noise, only to realise it was the bells around the necks of a herd of sheep we could hear.  The dogs who were guarding them started taking an interest in us when we stopped to take photos so we meandered on.

We ended up doing a bit of a loop to find an alternative way back to the campsite.  This beach is actually marked on Google Maps as a road.  I’m not sure whether any such thing ever actually existed here or whether it has been covered by sand washed up in winter storms, but we ended up having to push our bikes through it for several hundred yards, which really wasn’t the relaxing, effortless ride we had envisaged.

We got back to the van, we retrieved the washing from the line and remade the bed and I watched the Tractor Boys spank Sheffield Wednesday 6-0.  Hurrah!  Tomorrow will be more interesting, I promise!

17 March 2024 - San Leone