Queueing happily

Perhaps it's proof that context is everything when I can assert that the sight of the traffic queue filling the windscreen made me positively joyful.

The giveaway was just off screen to the left. My former colleague, Chat, worked out our whereabouts straightaway when I posted the next picture.

So far as I am aware the only ferry company in the world to decorate its ships with giant cartoon characters is Moby Lines. They specialise in connecting the Italian mainland with its neighbouring islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea, or to be accurate the larger ones, Corsica, Sardinia and Elba. We were heading for the latter, but not on the cartoon festooned vessel. The more mundanely liveried Blu-Navy ship was £20 cheaper, so we opted for that one. 

All the sailings seemed to be busy, making us doubt the word of the campsite we had phoned who had reassured us 'there were lots of spaces'. We were sure of two things, our neighbours were going to be German, and we were likely to remain the only Brits abroad.

I have a thing about Mediterranean ferries. sailing on them takes you beyond TripAdvisor's hotspots, the sea's glamorous, super yacht crowded harbours and into a grittier more workaday Mediterranean. This is certainly the case so far as Piombino is concerned, the small industrial port in southern Tuscany where we caught the boat to Elba.

From the sea it looks like Port Talbot-on- Med, which is unsurprising given that Elba's wealth derived not from looking beauteous, but from its extensive iron ore deposits which were worked from Etruscan times right up until the 1980s. I imagine Piombino's heavy industry developed because of its proximity to the mines, though these days its somewhat delapidated looking plants look like chemical works.

The view towards Elba was much more prepossessing. 

The name of the island's capital, Portoferraio, may mean 'Ironport' but unlike it's neighbour on the mainland you can forget industrial decay. Blessed with a big natural harbour, Portoferraio is a classic small Mediterranean port, its ochre toned houses tumbling down a hillside topped by an impressive fortress. Backed by a forested hinterland and grey mountains beyond, it is a classic Mediterranean prospect. So beautiful. 

We were heading for Rosselba le Palme, a resort style campsite about 7km from the island's main town. Resorts are not really our style, but when we had a family holiday here in 2004 we liked the botanical gardens at its centre, its spectacular wooded setting with views across the bay towards Portoferraio, we remembered it as a beautiful place with a modicum of style. Sometimes when you return to places after some years you are destined to be disappointed, but not so here, it turned out to be as lovely as we remembered it. So what do you do these days to celebrate such moments? You tell Facebook.