19 March 2024 – Plastic and Beach

Miles driven today = 72

Total Miles to date = 2,534

This morning we quickly reacquainted ourselves with our friend the SS115 coastal route along the southern edge of Sicily’s triangle.  

The scenery was nicely undulating but very quickly we became aware of vast acreages of polytunnels blotting the otherwise bucolic landscape.  For mile after mile there was barely a moment when we didn’t have a significant portion of our windscreen taken up by a Sea of glistening  plastic sheeting.  One has to put one’s faith in humanity and hope that it is all disposed of properly when it reaches the end of its useful life but judging by the amount of trash dumped in every lay-by along the way, I have my doubts.  

Once again, the road itself was generally smooth and there was relatively little traffic until we found ourselves making our way through the sizeable conurbation of Gela, at which point I had to revert to defensive town driving mode with vehicles flinging themselves in front of me from every conceivable direction.

The coastal route became the SP51 and then the SP31 and then at Scoglitti it disappeared altogether into a sand bank so we had to make a short detour inland to reach our destination at Punta Braccetto.

We could have taken our pick of at least 4 open campsites here, all of which have direct access to a golden sandy beach.  We plumped for Camping Luminoso, a €25 per night ACSI site with large pitches and our own private loo!

Here’s the beach looking to the East.

And here it is from the same spot looking West.

We walked the entire length hoping to explore the headlands at either end but both were fenced off and access only appears to be via the campsites which own those particular parts of the beach.

I did manage to go for a paddle and I have to say it wasn’t as chilly as I was expecting but I’m not tempted to break out the swimming trunks just yet.

The rest of the afternoon has been a very lazy affair and with virtually wall to wall sunshine our tans are starting to come along nicely.  Most of our fellow campers here seem to be long term residents judging by the way they are all set up.  Our Estonian neighbours bounded over and introduced themselves shortly after we arrived and seemed quite shocked when we told them that we only intended to stay the one night.

20 March 2024 - Ragusa