I am a big fan of the Direct Ferries app. It allows you to book a ferry more or less anywhere in the world. Just looking at it cheers me up. I use it all the time when planning our trips. You can happen upon some remarkable deals. Using a 'seniors discount' we managed to find a a sailing from Livorno to Olbia - a nine hour crossing - for just £82, far less than the Dover/Calais route. Today Irish Ferries offered a short Channel crossing for a motorhome for £127. How can the fare for a journey of 190 miles across the Tyrrhenian Sea be 30% cheaper than one for 22 miles over 'La Manche'?
I had one nagging doubt, our bargain crossing was booked with Grimaldi Ferries, which specialises in routes crossing the central Mediterranean and the Adriatic. Our past experience with Grimaldi is well documented in the blog. Our first journey with the company from Brindisi to Patras in 2015 was so bad it resulted in us nicknaming them 'Grim-mouldy Ferries'.
Our sailing tomorrow is at 10am, but we are required to be at the port two hours earlier. There is a sosta at Livorno docks but it's next to the Moby Line terminal in a different area of the port. Some online reviews claimed that the facility is reserved for people booked with Moby. So we opted to use a sosta about 20km north of Livorno at the Marina di Pisa situated at the mouth of the Arno, though this required waking up early at 6am.
The marina at Marina di Pisa was full of swanky looking yachts, but the town itself looks somewhat god-forsaken. There are exceptions of course, but quite a lot of Italy's seaside is a bit naff.
Still, the view across the broad river mouth towards the Tuscan hills was spectacular, illuminated by a numinous thundery light.
Without the assistance of Google Map's perky P A. it might well have proven tricky to find the Grimaldi terminal, the road network around the port area is very confusing and at 7.30am an un-nerving mix of speeding containers trucks and locals late for work.
We arrived to find the usual scrum at the dock entrance. It looks like complete chaos, but sequestered within the melee there is a system, albeit an arcane Italian one. By some hidden osmotic process vehicles are mysteriously absorbed aboard. Maybe it would take the local priest to explain how it's done, to a godless Northerner it seemed miraculous.
Italian ferries never leave or arrive on time, timetables are approximate. Livorno was wreathed in morning mist as we departed - only 20 minutes late. By the time we'd found the café and breakfasted the sun had broken through and by midday we were sailing across a glassy sea in the crystalline light of a classic 'blue Med day'.
We should not have worried about opting for a Grimaldi crossing at a bargain basement price. There was nothing whatsoever grim and mouldy about this Grimaldi ferry, it was modern, stylish, with a choice of comfortable lounge areas. The self service cafeteria offered classic pasta dishes cooked in small batches to ensure freshness.
The Italian staff were friendly and welcoming. Even the deckhands charged with speedily loading and unloading scores of nervous motorhomers who usually adopt a surly demeanour, barking orders in high octane Italian at the hapless drivers just doing their best, today seemed unusually amiable.
The voyage from Livorno to Olbia traverses the entire length of theTuscan archipelago, passing in turn Elba, Capraia then Montecristo. All the while the jagged cliffs and cloud wreathed mountains of Corsica slide by on the starboard side.
It takes almost four hours to sail the length of Corsica, from Cap Corse in the north to the sheer cliffs by Bonifacio near the island's southeastern tip until Gallura Sardinia's most northerly region, appears in the misty distance.
Hereabouts is my happy place. In 1998 we spent a whole month camping with the kids in a big Cabanon frame tent, mainly in Corsica, but briefly for few days in northern Sardinia, Matthew our eldest was almost 12, Sarah, a very sassy ten years old, and Laura who had just turned three, - the perfect age to grub around in the bushes and fearlessly paddle about in the sea. Corsica and Sardinia's wild, scrubby landscape, white sand beaches and rocky coves captured my imagination. I fell in love with the Mediterranean.
Every so often we wandered about on deck , time slowed. I watched the wake spread out behind us like a vanishing point in reverse. It struck me just how much I have written over the years reflects our Mediterranean travels. I have internalised the place, it has become an abiding preoccupation. Intrigued by this I spent the rest of the journey collecting together these bits and pieces , written occasionally over almost quarter of a century.
I realise my predeliction is fanciful, but I also know that in an hour or two, when I drive gingerly down the ramp and the crockery and cutlery go clank in the back and the suspension bounces slightly when we bump onto the quayside I will be struck by a pang of recognition though it's absurd that you can have a sense of homecoming in a place you've never visited before.
Olbia is a small Mediterranean port, we've arrived at quite a few in our time. In every single one I have had a sense of it being familiar, a nagging deja vue -mysteriously I feel at home. Maybe its akin to Derrida's notion of hauntology, that as well as having a nostalgic longing for an idealised past, we can be haunted by a future that never quite materialised, or in my case be appropriated by a culture that I am unconnected to, akin to false memory, assailed by an imagined belonging.
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