27 March 2024 – Back on the Misty Mainland

Miles driven today = 78

Total Miles to date = 2,844

We bade Sicily a fond farewell through the mist this morning as our ferry left Messina for the 20 minutes crossing back to the mainland.  It was a much bigger boat this time.  A proper cross-channel style ferry with 3 car decks and a large lounge with an over-populated café, full of people who had poured off the several buses which were on board.  We had a quick look round but decided we preferred to keep our own company in the van so we retreated to the lower deck where a cacophony of over-sensitive car alarms were constantly being set off by the swell of the waves as we crossed.

On disembarking at Villa San Giovanni we made our way a few kilometres South to Reggio Calabria where there is a very interesting sounding National Museum stuffed full of antiquities from the Hellenic era.  The star turns of these are the Riace Bronzes.  Two 5th century BC statues which were hauled out of the Sea in the early 70’s and are reckoned to be the best preserved examples of their kind. 

But there was absolutely nowhere to park and the traffic was utter bedlam.  I know Italians are happy to double park and block the road while they pop into the shops for a bag of spuds but I doubt we would have got away with it in our beastie so we did a rapid about face and scarpered.

Our plan for the next 3 days is to follow the coastline all the way around the sole of Italy’s boot, so we picked up the E90 which will be our almost constant companion for the majority of that journey.  We managed to pick up some bread rolls in a small supermarket with the intention of pulling over at some point for lunch but there were hardly any suitable lay-bys.  A lot of the beaches looked very tempting indeed but the coastal railway line forms a constant barrier between the road and the Sea so access is almost impossible.

After passing mainland Italy’s most Southerly point we turned the corner Northwards and were heading for a sosta just outside Bianco.  We had resigned ourselves to completing our journey before we would be able to have lunch when Lisa spotted a motorhome down by the beach in Canalello.  So we turned off the main road and found our way under this railway bridge to join them.

We had our lunch while we listened to the waves crashing on the beach and decided to stay put for the night as we were only 10km shy of our original destination anyway.  There is a publicly accessible sosta of sorts on the other side of the road with water supply and chemical toilet dump which we may make use of in the morning.

We are also right across the road from the station but the trains are no more frequent than hourly in each direction and are almost inaudible what with the sound of the waves drowning out any engine noise. 

We went for a stroll up the beach a little earlier.  It’s not completely litter free but it’s a marked improvement on a lot that we have seen.  The sand is coarse and grey but I still reckon it would be a great swimming beach in the Summer.

An Italian and a German van have joined us and the Belgians who were already here this afternoon to give our little encampment a proper international feel and the Carabinieri have made a couple of sweeps past to make sure all is in order.  With some vicious looking speed humps I very much doubt we will be subjected to any boy-racer action so hopefully it will just be us and the waves.

My weather app forecast rain this afternoon.  None materialized but the misty conditions have persisted all day.  With Easter on the horizon we’re looking to get to Matera on Saturday so that’s going to involve a couple of 100+ mile days.  But with a forecast like this we’ll be looking to get most of the driving done by lunchtime each day so that we can have a bit of beach time and top up our tans in the afternoons.

28 March 2024 - Le Castella