Ingorgo stradale, momento Nuraghic

 

Sardinia is the second largest island in the Mediterranean, only a little smaller than neighbouring Sicily. Big, but not huge, both are about the same area as Wales. 

So, at a stretch it would have been possible to drive the 180 miles from Jamaica Beach back to Laguna Blu Camping near Alghero in one go. However we want to stop off and visit Nuraghe Santu Antine, so splitting the trip made more sense. The challenge was to find somewhere en route to stay. We considered two sostas, one situated in an urban car park in the suburbs of Oristano, and another nearby in Santa Giusta. Both had mixed reviews, the one in Oristano was noisy, people were divided about Santa Giusta, everyone praised the layout and service point but a few people found the app operated entry system tricky to figure out.

It was slow going at first, to reach the motorway involved navigating back towards the outskirts of Cagliari on local roads with multiple roundabouts and inconsistent signing. We only went off track a couple of times, Google maps proved a better guide than the Sat Nav. She seemed determined to take us on a themed tour of the lesser frequented donkey tracks of southern Sardinia.

However once on the motorway we made rapid progress arriving outside the Santa Giusta sosta by mid-afternoon. The reviews were right, it was well designed and conveniently situated, but also entirely empty apart from one clapped out van in the corner which looked as if it had been rusting there for years. It was also true that the app based entry and payment system was bewildering. 

Even the version in English was very confusing. Moreover it demanded a lot of personal information - including my passport number and place of birth. I did comply, but was left wondering, is it wise to place so much personal information into an obscure app - am I inviting identity theft?

Having completed the process and gifted 'Inarea' the requisite €6.50 we followed the instructions to approach the entrance and zap a QR code with my phone. The barrier lifted, then immediately came down again before we could drive through. No amount of faffing about would shift it. The shenanigans had taken over half an hour. We decided to give up, though I did help myself to four watering cans worth of drinking water from the service point to top up our tank.

'Well at least the sosta in the car park in Oristano is only a ten minute drive', we agreed. It was true, unfortunately the street leading to it was being resurfaced and temporary diversions signs were in place that directed us through a grid of narrow one way streets. Google maps and the Sat Nav were useless - they didn't know about the road works. Eventually after a few tight squeezes we ended up parked on a scrap of waste ground next to the entrance to Oristano's main hospital. What now? The priority was to get out of Oristano so we reset the sat-nav back to another public car park is Santa Giusta, at least the place was quiet and next to the autostrada junction.

Parked there we hatched plan B. There are sostas here and there in Sardinian villages but we had been avoiding rural roads, particularly in upland areas. They are nerve-wracking if you happen to be driving anything bigger than a Fiat Panda. However Gill pinpointed a sosta at Semetene to the north of us. It was only 3.5kms from a junction and less than 20 Kms from Nuraghe Santu Antine that we were planning to visit tomorrow. 

The road to the sosta was only mildly alarming and its situation in an empty looking upland valley very beautiful.

The place was busier than we expected, almost a dozen mohos parked in the compact space. Luckily there was room for us, and a couple more that turned up at dusk. Not all days go to plan and today was certainly one of them.

It was overcast when we arrived, but just before sunset the cloud cover thinned and the green valley surrounding Semetene was bathed in a golden light.

 

The landscape looked Iberian rather than Italian. Perhaps it was the simple architecture of the village that reminded me of Spain. The regions of Italy are very diverse, both culturally, gastronomically and geographically, Ticino is not at all like Sicily. However there is something recognisably Italian about both. However, Sardinia sometimes feels like a different country altogether.

Next day we managed an early start, at least by our standards - around ten thirty. We are definitely one of the more tardy members of the motorhoming community. Quite often we are still having a bit of a lie-in when throb of adjacent Ducati shames into action. Today, as often, the sosta was almost deserted by the time we made our 'early departure'.

It was less than a half hour drive from the sosta to Nuraghe Santu Antine. The car park was small but luckily there was a scrap of waste ground at the far end big enough to accommodate a couple of motorhomes, Sadly the space left free was covered in big puddles after the overnight showers. 

There are about 7000 Nuraghic monuments scattered across the Sardinian landscape, many are in remote locations with little to see other than heaps of large boulders and a grassy mound. Only a few have been explored using modern archeological techniques. Santu Antine is one of the best preserved Nuraghe, the remains of a tribal fortress or'palatial dwelling' extended over many generations.

The ruins are varied, some are dwellings, great and small, others are tombs, there is little evidence of large scale temples or sacred spaces. Our knowledge of Nuraghic culture or history is very limited, but one thing the remains have in common is the building technique - round house structures using massive dry stone blocks predominantly.

Santu Antine lies a few hundred metres from the road, dominating a broad plain circled by mountains and old volcanic cones. Remains of another nuraghe can be seen in the middle distance. 

The culture that produced these monuments was long lived, the earliest Nuraghe dating from the middle bronze age, around 1600BCE. It appears that the Nuraghic age faded around the time Sardinia passed from Carthage's sphere of influence to Rome's, an outcome of the Second Punic War which ended in 201BCE. The most remarkable thing about Sardinia's first identifiable indigenous culture is not its longevity - 1400 years - but the fact that so little is known about it aside from several thousand piles of stones. How people lived, their beliefs and practices, political structure and language is largely a mystery.

Ancient Sardinians do get mentioned in passing by Hellenistic Greek writers, but mostly the comments relate to their mythological ancestry. In terms of practical information all you can glean is they were thought to have lived mainly inland and not on the coast, they were pastoralists and herders rather than farmers and were violent and warmongering. 

This would fit with the reconstruction of Nuraghe Santu Antine as a clan or tribal stronghold. Such arrangements were commonplace in other parts of the Mediterranean even up until modern times, such as the towers found in the mountains of the Mani in the Peloponnese. Closer to home, Pele towers in the borderlands between England and Scotland are reminders that lawlessness and intergenerational feuding between neighbours is not something confined to prehistory.

 

Archaeologists estimate that the main tower was originally 25m - 30m tall. Even in a ruined state it looks impressive. The towers were linked by concentric passages with small anterooms off them.

There was one larger room with blackened stonework, perhaps the main room where food was cooked.

Some of the passageways have been restored and you can clamber to the top of these up a rough hewn spiral staircase. I was pleased to reach the top. The interior was claustrophobic and the atmosphere slightly sinister, like being trapped in an un-nerving dream. 

From the top the view towards the distant mountains should have been magnificent, but again there was something foreboding about it. I took a panorama - checking it I was reminded of the doomed landscape in the Apple TV miniseries, 'Silo'.

Unsurprisingly, given the labyrinthine layout Gill and I had become separated. I decided to find her. First I needed to descend to ground level. It proved unexpectedly challenging. We had arrived at the same time as two tour buses. The occupants were nowhere to be seen on the site, I guess they had gone for lunch at the café. 

Now they all wanted to climb to the top of the tower. I was about 3m from the ground floor at a sharp turn in the stairwell when the first of the German tour party began to climb up, glaring at me as they squeezed past. If one of them had paused for 20 seconds to let me through then the 60 people behind them would have been able to ascend easily, but nobody would, so they all edged past me stony faced

 I found Gill, She must have wondered why I greeted her as if we'd been parted for weeks.

We headed to the shop and café. I bought a particularly gruesome Nuraghic mask fridge magnet as a memento of our visit. We had the café to ourselves as the German contingent were going to be trapped in the Nuraghe for hours. There was only space on the top for about twelve people at most, and there were two coach loads of them. If they couldn't cooperate with a lone English tourist on the stairs what hope did they have of taking turns to take a photo from the top of the tower?

It was good that we had succeeded to visit one of Sardinia's most significant Nuraghe, even if it had proven somewhat more challenging than we had anticipated. We headed for Alghero, we need to stop and relax, do bugger-all except eat gelato and sit on the beach.

Archaeology versus meteorology

We had a plan, (we always do). We ditched it, (it happens). It was a very good plan, because I am very good at planning. I spent twenty years where professionally it was the most important part of my job..... spreadsheet Pete!

However, both at work and in everyday life plans never work perfectly because things are unpredictable - ultimately chaos theory rules. If you are touring by motorhome there are many things that can upend your plans, esoteric local festivals, unexpectedly busy sites due to some distant country's school holidays, road closures, mechanical breakdowns, accidents... Really, if you dislike uncertainty it would be better to stay at home.

In practice the most chaotic thing we have to deal with is the weather. Though we both are inveterate travellers, neither of us are outdoorsy. If rainy days are forecast we don't carry on regardless, we try to follow the sun.

After visiting San'Antioco and Isola San Pietro our plan had been to head east towards Cagliari, staying at a big site near Pula. Maybe we would have taken the bus into the city, certainly we would have visited the archeological site at Nora which has well preserved remains of an important sea port used by the Phoenicians, Catheginians and Romans. Nearby are two Bronze age monuments of Sardinia's unique Nuraghic culture. 

We have ten days remaining before we catch the night ferry from Olbia to Livorno. Many campsites in Sardinia are closed by mid-September and only a handful remain open by mid-October. Most of these are on the east coast, which makes sense as it faces the mainland where the ferry ports are - Golfo Aranchini, Olbia and Arbatax. So our plan was to head up the east, using a campsite near Muravera. Sadly, the medium range forecast was mixed to say the least, showery interspersed with thunder storms.

The weather in Northwest Sardinia was much sunnier, but that would mean heading back to Olbia using the same motorways we took to get here and giving up on visiting the archeological sites. Most people would have a brief chat about this and make a decision. I am annoyingly pedantic, I drive myself nuts, Gill must have saintly qualities to have put up with it for half a century. I consulted a range of meteorological sites, Google Maps, the Michelin Italian road atlas, Search For Sites. Park for Night, Acsi Eurocampings searchable database, Wikipedia's entry on Nuraghic culture, then pinpointed the location of every Lidl in Sardinia, and summarised the results in a gnomic chart.

The conclusion was no different what I knew all along, we don't like camping in the rain. So if course we are going to head back north again retracing where we have just come from even though sostas with services are hard to find and it means returning to the campsite in Alghero (the only one still open on the West coast) - a place I was quite rude about  previously.

Right now it's still beautifully sunny. The sosta where we are parked is idiosyncratic. It's quite remote, located in the extensive car park of the 'Jamaican Beach' cocktail bar. It appears to be some kind of tribal gathering place for the Bundersrepublik's kite surfing fraternity. It is a fraternity, there were a couple of female kite surfers, but predominantly it seems to be a man thing. Within this there are two species, honed athletic types in crisp white shorts and 'bros' with man buns and crumpled khakis. Lots of man love and bonding going on, high-fiving, fist bumping, and 'bro-hugs. I do love niche sub-cultures.

Some of the reviews mentioned that the place was unwelcoming. I don't think that's quite the case, its simple self absorbed, if you don't have a kite board then you simply don't exist. The guy at the service point was amazed that that I could not understand him - not a kite surfer, not German - does not compute....

What reviewers were right about is that sitting on the beach watching the kite surfers was very entertaining, a huge amount of faffing about with complicated kit to get a few minutes of adrenaline fuelled pleasure, I guess you have to be an adrenaline junkie to understand the appeal. 

In the winter we share beach parkings with Portugal's surfing community. They are a different breed. There is something almost spiritual in the relationship between the surfer and the sea, the sheer audacity of the thing, a frail human skimming the concave face of a glorious roller. Snatching a gust is not the same as catching a wave. Watching the kite surfing aficionados it seems anyone who is reasonably fit and lacks a sense of personal safety could become proficient at it, they came in many shapes and sizes. It's not the same with big wave surfers, they all look lithe, slim but powerful, beautifully honed bodies like a dancer's.

Though the Search for Sites app claimed the sosta had a service point it isn't fully functional. There is a black water dump, but the white water refill is adjacent to it which is a somewhat insanitary arrangement. Even more tricky is there is nowhere to drain grey water, luckily our tank was only half full, but in hot weather it does start to smell a bit fruity if it's not emptied regularly.

While we watched the kite surfers we hatched a plan. Head back to the campsite at Alghero for a few days via an overnight stop at a sosta with a service point in Santa Giusta on the outskirts of Oristano. Then the next day carry on to Alghero via a lunch stop at a Nuraghic site just off the motorway which looked to have a big enough car park to accommodate a moho. A good plan, that's what I like, what could possibly go wrong?

Happy place(s)

I think I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I have a bit of a thing about small Mediterranean ports, announcing that I regarded them as 'my happy place'. This being so, right now I should feeling utterly overjoyed. The twin Islands of Sant' Antioco and San Pietro proffer a 'happy place' bogof deal, the former's Calasetta facing the latter's Carloforte across a deep blue six kilometres wide channel.

Both small ports hit the happy place spot. Even better they are connected by an ancient rust bucket ferry, the type you see connecting Greek Islands  where only thing keeping it going are a clutch of icons dangling in the wheelhouse, though in the present case I guess it was 'Our Lady' keeping it afloat.

A section of the quayside parking had been dedicated to motorhomes. There are no services but you are welcome to stay overnight. The ferry service runs 24/7, but we slept through ok. It must be the sea air.

Sardinia, like Sicily has been ruled by many powers over the centuries yet still managed to maintain its unique culture and language. From fourteenth to the early eighteenth century the island was part of Spanish Kingdom of Aragon. Later, up until the Unification of Italy in 1870 Sardinia belonged to the House of Savoy. It was during this era, in the Eighteenth century, that the ports of Casaletta and Carloforte were built.

Architecturally the two places look quite different. Casaletta on the island of San Antioco does seem to reflect its Spanish heritage, not just its grid plan but in the plain style of the buildings. In part it looked Andalusian...

Oddly though some streets looked distinctly Portuguese.

Overlooking the town is a small Mortello style tower. Settlements on the Sardinian coast tend to be fortified. Up until the end of the Eighteenth Century places were prone to attack by Barbary pirates. 

Just to add to the Pan- Mediterranean influences the roofscape from the tower's terrace looked distinctly Greek. 

From the far side of the terrace there was a fabulous view across to Sardinia, crystal clear light, majestic thunderclouds towering above the mountains.

 We walked back down the steep streets towards the port.

The colours here were more Ligurian or Provencal, lots of pastel shades punctuated by a more startling, contemporary day-glo effects.

We'd passed a gelateria earlier, it claimed it reopened at four. We arrived on the dot. Two minutes later we were welcomed in. 

By the time we had ruminated over our flavours three more people had arrived. Italy is full of small pleasures, an espresso costing €2.00, a small cone with two delicious flavours costing little more, and all the free joyous stuff, like welcoming smiles, the graciousness of everyday life, it's very easy to feel happy here.

We arrived back at the harbour by the fishing port. Big tuna boats line the outer harbour. In the marina among the yachts and speedboats smaller traditional inshore fishing boats were moored. 

Beautiful old wooden ones with lanteen sails, they're ubiquitous throughout the Med, in Spain, Malta and in Greece. How long will the trade remain, working them must be hazardous and the returns uncertain - a tough life, and not a particularly attractive one to the TikTok generation.

On the way back to the van we called into the ticket kiosk to check the times of tomorrow's ferry. The boats are regular, we decided the 10.40am was the one We don't do perky mornings these days.

The girl in the kiosk had advised that it was best to turn up at least a quarter of an hour before the ferry was due to depart. We wondered why, but took her advice. It was good that we did, the ticket queue next morning was chaotic, the simplest transaction mysteriously protracted, each one involved a little skit.

Eventually, only ten minutes later than scheduled we departed, not everyone made it, one woman was left remonstrating on the dock as we sailed off.

The narrow straights that separate Calasetta from Carloforte are only six kilometres across, but it takes the ferry 35 minutes to cross them. It was surprisingly busy and people on upper deck seemed very jolly. The reason for this became apparent as soon as we landed. Carloforte's main street runs straight from the seafront. It was lined with food stalls. 

A big outdoor kitchen had been set up in Piazza Republica with rows of benches in front so people could watch cookery demonstrations. 

A woman in traditional Arab dress had attracted a considerable crowd to watch her demonstrate how to make authentic couscous dishes. Local food really, Tunisia is closer to Isola San Pietro than Sicily.

Trestle tables and benches ran all the way from here to the big parish church at the end of the street. A small notice advertised the menu for a communal lunch commencing at noon.

We retired to a shady café in the main square to rethink our plans. We had identified a restaurant that specialised in piadina, flatbreads filled with enticing fillings - too delicious to be called a sandwich. Given Carloforte's specialist fishing fleet we had already decided to go for a tuna one. Now though, with the chance of participating in a communal Italian lunch we were faced with a dilemma. 

While we were mulling this over I noticed something peculiar. A number of the men nearby bore a striking resemblance to Stanley Tucci.

This phenomena temporarily derailed our culinary discussion and sent us down a different rabbit hole. Has Stanley Tucci based his look on an established stereotype of an Italian gourmet, or is 'Tucci style' - small, neat, sharp dressed guy with shaved head and vivid specs - now the go-to look for style conscious middle aged Italian men out for a Sunday lunch?

We decided to seek out the piadina place which was on a nearby street. The notice on the door said it was closed today 'for the festival'.

 

This should have made our choice simpler but in the meantime we had discovered a food truck doing tuna sandwiches and a stall specialising in Sicilian dishes offering aranchini and cannoli. We decided to take a tapas approach:

We shared a €15 plate from the communal kitchen - it's always delightful to join a group of Italians enjoying lunch.....

then moved onto the Sicilian food stall, bought two aranchini to eat immediately (an aubergine filled one and a ragu), and two canoli for later (carefully wrapped and bagged by the vendor).

We found a nearby bench and made short work of the aranchini. Desert was provided by the gelateria up a side street nearby.

The alleyways of Carloforte are colourful.

Some running parallel to the harbour...

Others stepped up the slope behind it.

They are beautifully maintained, clearly a source of local pride.

Information boards explain something of the town's history. Though technically part of the Kingdom of Savoy, along with the rest of Sardinia, Carloforte managed to maintain a measure of autonomy. It looks prosperous today, and judging by the impressive merchant's houses dating front the Eighteenth Century was wealthy in the past.

It was politically progressive too. In the 1790s it proclaimed itself an Independent Republic with a semi-democratic government, though this was short lived and became subsumed by Napoleon's broader imperial ambitions.

I mentioned in a previous post that a quarter of a century ago I had become slightly addicted to a webcam of a marina on either Isola San Antioco or here on San Pietro. Could I find it? I only remembered two things about it, there was a petrol station on the quayside and a number of flagpoles in front of the yachts. The harbour in Calasetta didn't look like this at all. However, as we walked along the quayside we passed a petrol station....

 then a series of flags flying on the quayside in front of the Coast Guard building...

Guess what was fixed to the wall half way up the building...?

One camera pointed straight at the flags, the other towards the petrol station. This had to be it. 

For some reason it pleased me inordinately that I had tracked my memory back to its source. I felt validated somehow, but why that should be the case I cannot explain at all.

We had decided to catch the 15.40 ferry back to Calasetta which gave us about forty minutes more to mooch about. We headed south, away from the historic centre to a more modern district next to a big salinas. There were blocks of modern flats with a play area beside them. A group of boys kicked a ball about. A black kid was the star, coolly dibbling past the others, then showing off his skills, controlling the ball in turn with his feet, knees and head. 

An old canal ran beside the salinas, inshore fishing boats moored along its banks. The bright noonday sun had faded into a cloudier afternoon, still, the silvery light was beautiful, and after weeks of technicolour days a reminder that grisaille has an understated charm of its own.

By the time we caught the ferry big clouds had gathered over the mountain of Sardinia. The forecast has been threatening thunder for days but so far it hadn't materialised. We stayed on the open deck even though there was the odd raindrop in the air. The narrow channel between San Pietro and Sant Antioco is very shallow, you could see the sand banks clearly just beneath us. Maybe that's why it takes forty minutes to travel just six kilometres. 

The ferry docked more or less next to where we had parked. Astonishingly the cannoli we had bought some hours previously were still in one piece - 

Great with a glass of chilled white wine ...

The couple of days we've spent on the islands have been great. However, there are no facilities here, we need a service point. There's a parking place at a restaurant called Jamaican Beach a few kilometres south of causeway. It has facilities according to 'Park for Nght', we'll head there next. Surely the kite surfing community that frequent the place can't be quite as 'up themselves' as the reviews imply. We shall see.