The peril of dipping your toe in..

The Arcipelago del Sulcis sounds as if it should be a remote patch of Mediterranean gorgeousness, and it is.

However, like most gorgeous places by the Med it's hardly 'undiscovered', so here we are sharing its charms with a couple of hundred Germans who like us have headed to Camping Tonnara in search of some shoulder season sunshine.

The site, judging by the design of the facilities, has been here for a few decades.  The place has recently been comprehensively 're-styled' and somewhat haphazardly upgraded.

Camping Tonnara's 'vibe' is pitched to appeal to the  German equivalent of a 'Guardian reader'. Chatgpt advised me that would be either a "ZEIT-Leser' or more radically, a "taz-Leser" They are here in droves, at least eighty mohos - from cute VW campers to Cathargo behemoths almost all from the Bundersrepublik. "Many man buns" Gill noted. So far I've spotted four foreign interlopers in  Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg-ob-das-Mittelmeer - three mohos from the Netherlands and us.

Tourism can produce bizarre monocultural enclaves. I am not intrinsically anti-German, in February 2019 I went off on a blog-rant about 'Spine', a little kbown vassal state of Essex located on the Costa Blanca near Calpe. If I am in Sardinia I want to experience its local culture not some weird curation pitched to appeal to people similar to me.

In the end it's a product of marketing, a kind of closed feedback loop where a pitch to a particular demographic attracts the like-minded. The USP at Camping Tonnara begins at reception where instead of a desk you are greeted by a very  relaxed young man sitting on a stool with an iPad on a pole. The decor exudes a vaguely alternative vibe, a bit ethnic, a tad eco with a dash of wellness thrown in for good measure. So to cut down on the use of paper customers are asked to take a photo of the campsite map. Admirable, but impractical, with a paper map when wandering about to find an empty pitch you can orientate it to match the lay of the land, on a phone screen the image just rotates annoyingly.

I can see the appeal of Camping Tonnara, at sunset the tiki bar at the beach takes on a real Ibiza feel, the 'cosy' pitches are well screened with flowering shrubs and the location is idyllic.

In terms of age the clientele was mixed, twenty something couples, millennials with kids, and older, seriously minded looking people sitting in front of their vans engrossed by chunky hardbacks. It was a left leaning looking group - but why predominantly German? That seemed odd. We've been on sites before where man-buns and hareem pants were distinctly over represented, amusing but harmless,  but the atmosphere here was peculiar, a tad frosty, offhand and unwelcoming.

I realise I am an outlier here, the reviews on Google are predominantly positive. No one seems to mind that there is no hot water at the washing up sinks, that the sanitary facilities on the north side of the site are old and have Turkish style toilets, that there is no properly designed motorhome service point - no way these days should you have to empty the chemical toilet waste into the same drain as the grey water. Yet the place charges a premium rate - €40 per night for a basic pitch in low season and people will pay this for the location and the 'cool vibe'. I don't think it's an acceptable trade-off - all campsites should conform to basic hygiene standards.

Anyway, we headed here because of the stunning beachside setting that would give me a chance to try SUPing on the Med. Cala Sapone is a paddleboarding dream location. 

There were a few of us, some content to explore the coves kayak style, others standing up. I can stand-up but so far only on flat calm reservoirs and lakes. However even a calm sea has criss-cross wavelets that give the board a different feel.

I had lots of fun paddling about the bay. When it came to standing up I found it a challenging and painful experience. The water was crystal clear, difficult to judge the depth. I figured I must have been in at least 1.5m of water the first time I tried to stand up.

I  fell straight in. Maybe there was a big rock nearby or I had misjudged the depth. There was a big splash and I slammed my left foot into a rock as I fell - the result, very painful toes. That brought day one's paddleboard adventure to an end.

However, I am nothing if not determined, just because I have a limp should not affect my ability to stay upright on a paddleboard I told myself. Next day I had a second go. 

I got even more adventurous paddling about among the reefs that edge the far side of Cala Sapone. Now it was time for a second attempt to stand up, this time in deeper water. I did get up and managed three or four strokes which normally would be enough to propel me forward and stabilise things. Maybe it was the unfamiliar motion of the board on the sea, but suddenly I lost my balance and fell in.

Self rescue is tricky, it takes a lot of momentum to propel yourself onto the board. In the end I opted to swim for about 25 metres, towing  the board behind me attached by the safety lanyard. After a couple of minutes I could feel the sea bed with my tip toes. That gave me enough momentum to flop back onto the board, scramble into a kneeling position and paddle back to the beach. I need more practice to standing-up when paddling about on the sea. Given the state of my foot maybe that is going to have to wait until February when we are back in Spain and Portugal.

After three days in Camping Tonnara it was time to leave. It's a fabulously situated site and I see why people love it. I don't know why but it didn't work for us, it had a curious vibe, it didn't feel very Italian - and we love Italy. 

We're heading to a harbourside car park by the ferry terminal at Calasetta on the western side of the island. The place has well regarded fish restaurants and an award winning gelateria. All Camping Tonnara  had was a takeaway place selling pizzas, and the site costs €40 per night. Calasetta's car park is free and you have to work hard to spend more than €5.00 for two delicious gelati. Delightful and cheap! That's what we like

North then south

Sardinia is not the easiest place to explore by motorhome. There are only six places that might be considered  a city or a large town - Cagliari, Oristano, Olbia, Alghero, Nuoro and Sassari. They are well connected by dual carriageways and well maintained main roads. Everywhere else the road system is very haphazard and in the mountains and coastal hills most are very narrow and bendy.

The older I get the more risk averse I become so far as where I am willing to drive the motorhome. Ten ago when touring the Peloponnese I would happily drive down a donkey track ignoring the squeaking sound of chunky olive branches scraping the side of the van. Narrow village streets with alarming overhanging balconies I regarded as a challenge rather than a hazard. Two smashed wing mirrors later and a decade of tricky moments and near misses have taken their toll. Our aim these days is to stick to main roads and use the ebikes or public transport to explore localities.

This meant rethinking my initial plan to circumnavigate Sardinia stopping in a mix of beach parking and campsites. The minor roads that hug the coast looked challenging when we zoomed in on them. What we decided to do instead was to adopt a patch approach, concentrating on the area south of Olbia, then Alghero and the area northwest of it, heading next to the far southwest corner, maybe taking a bus trip into Cagliari, then finishing with a few days on the east coast near Muravera or Arbatax.

The disadvantage is that it means doubling back from Alghero towards Sassari to enable us to pick up the dual carriageway south towards Oristano and Cagliari. 

For some reason we have struggled with supermarket shopping, our needs are simple, an easily accessible supermarket without a height barrier and an empty enough car park to easily accommodate a moho. Should be simple, but it's not. We were bewailing this when a Eurospin icon mysteriously popped-up on Google maps seemingly in the middle of nowhere just off the next junction.

Big empty car park, great supermarket - a bit of a discount brand like Aldi....

It doesn't take a lot to make us happy!

Both on the journey from Olbia to Sassari and today, southwards to Oristano we have been struck by an uncanny resemblance between inland Sardinia and Portugal's Alentejo. It's the same mix of scrubby garrigue and stone strewn fields, patches of eucalyptus and pine, scattered, depopulated looking hamlets and abandoned farms. What they have in common, aside that they are broadly in the same Mediterranean climatic zone, is steady depopulation for at least a century. Just how serious a problem this is for Sardinia can be seen by comparing it with the neighbouring island of Sicily, which is only marginally larger. Whereas Sardinia has a population density of around 70 people per square kilometre Sicily's is more than five times that. The sense of space and the need to 'get away from it all' may be part of the island's visitor appeal but the economic decline and decay of communities poses an existential challenge for native Sardinians.

 I suppose it would be possible to reach the southwest of the island in one go from Alghero, but we don't do rushing about these days. Initially we looked at overnighting in a car park with a service point in the suburbs of Oristano, but the reviews were lukewarm. Gill found an alternative, Camping Bella Sardegna, on the coast near Torre del Pozzo, again it meant doubling back north again for a few kilometres.

We arrived at 1.15pm, just after reception closed. The 1 - 3pm. 'quiet time' is more or less universal in Sardinia, though most supermarkets and petrol stations do stay open. 

The site is beautifully situated in a pine forest which covers the dunes.

The huge beach is about half a kilometre away down a sandy track. It's a wild, empty stretch of coastline. Even though the wind was light the surf was considerable. Certainly too rough to paddleboard, a few years ago I would have been happy enough to swim in such conditions, these days I prefer flat calm.

We have had two gloriously sunny days, however the dense canopy of the pine forest has shaded us from it. En masse umbrella pines make magical woodlands - very 'Where the Wild Things Are' if you mentally erase the campervans.

After dark a full 'hunters' moon heightened the Sendak effect.

Gill has a more sinister take on the place. Odd small, whitewashed stone huts are dotted around the site. They look a little spectral after dark, I can see where she is coming from when she says they have a Lynchian vibe, add an electrostatic crackle and the scene gets very Twin Peaks.

 Travel long enough and you do sense that reality may be a loosening skein prone to unravel at any moment.

All over Sardinia campsites are closing, this one  in three days time. It's got an end of season vibe. The place mainly consists of self catering chalets and erected tents, all empty. 

There's still a few motorhomes scattered about, in truth they are a sideline. Facilities like the service point and chemical toilet emptying are inconveniently situated. The location is great, but the services poor. Thankfully it's just a two day stopover.

Next day - southwards once more, our destination two small islands near the southwest tip of Sardinia, Sant Antioco and Sant Pietro. I've been dreaming about visiting them for a very long time.

 I can't remember exactly when we first were connected to the internet, around 1997 I would guess. It was a very different place back then, more a 'globe of villages' than the global dystopian metropolis it has become. We used a niche Norwegian search engine called 'alltheweb', Google wasn't even a thing. Just browsing was an end in itself. We became fascinated by web cams, the fact we could watch a summer sunrise on a New Zealand beach while a full moon glistened outside on a frosty garden in Derbyshire seemed astonishing.

We had four favourites - a web cam in the Hogs Breath Saloon in Key West, one in Times Square, New York, the cam broadcasting  from the beach car park in Kaiteriteri on New Zealand's south island and images streamed from a  small marina near Sant Antioco in Sardinia.

Over the years we managed to visit three of our pre-millennia virtual hotspots for real. Times Square New York in 2002, The Hogs Breath Saloon, Key West in 2007, and Kaiteriteri in 2018. Finally in the next couple of days we aim find the marina on Sant Antioco - I'm convinced it was in Calasetta. We shall see.

Before then we have to get there, Sardinia is the second biggest Island in the Mediterranean - roughly the size of Wales. It's a 185km drive from Torre del Pozzo to Sant Antioco, most of it on autostrada but topped and tailed by more local roads. 

The top was ok, the tail less so, especially as I missed a turning about 10 Kms north of Cagliari and ended up on a more minor road than planned. The 'yellow road' turned out to be 85kms of potholes and crumbling verges , nevertheless it was a beautiful drive through hill country overlooked by craggy peaks.

Sant Antioco once was an island, now it's more of an isthmus, connected to 'mainland' Sardinia these days by a causeway and a short metal girder bridge. We were e heading for a remote campsite in the southwest corner but needed supplies. Sant Antioco town has a Lidl with a big moho friendly car park. I wandered its aisles in wonder - mixed nuts! basic muesli! blueberries! Greek yogurt - my breakfast essentials replenished. I am a simple soul at heart, It doesn't take much to please me.

The final 5kms to Camping Tonnara took us  down a single track road that hugged the spectacular coast - very Peloponnese we agreed.

 It was true it did feel like southern Greece, deep blue sea, sun bleached landscape, gnarled olive trees and at the end of the narrow, twisting road a steeply terraced campsite with its own little cove, entirely occupied by Germans.

 

Il Ducioville

Where we are staying, Camping Baia Blu Laguna, is about 5kms north of Alghero city centre within sight of Fertilia, a small harbourside village at the seaward end of the Stagno di Calich inlet. The area has been inhabited for millenia. The remains of a Roman bridge is clearly visible at the lagoon's mouth.

However Fertilia itself is barely a century old but looks dilapidated and unloved, a grim grid of utilitarian blocks built  a little less than century ago.

Most people would not give the place a second glance. However, I have a bit of a thing about twentieth century municipal architecture. The crumbling concrete may look a tad dystopian now but it masks an ill-concieved utopian ambition.

Fertilia is a product the 'reign' of  'Il Ducio'. It's as good a 'concrete' example as you might find of his fascist regime's radical nationalist project to impose a singular Italian identity on a country that merely a half century previously had been a hotchpotch of different kingdoms and duchys with diverse traditions, cultures, dialects and languages.

Fertilia was built as a new, overtly Italian fishing port to rival Alghero - a Sardinian one just across the bay. People from northern Italy, Veneto and Fruilia mainly, were relocated here in the hope it would strengthen a singular Italian speaking culture.

The arcaded rectilinear streets ape Roman architecture, its stern macho style much loved by Europe's fascist regimes.

The public building are remarkable examples of this classicised version of modernism that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s; it's  a more austere variant of Art Deco. 

An enormous church dominates the northern edge of the village.

In Italy, Spain and Portugal conservative Roman Catholicism was very much part of the cultural mix that propped up southern Europe's fascist governments.

The town hall at the opposite end of the main street exudes equally monumental tendencies. Its aesthetic is stern and idealistic, chillingly authoritarian.

 It is these qualities that have led to the style being 'written out' of the mainstream history of twentieth century architecture - as are the buildings of Soviet Russia and the post war 'Eastern bloc'.

Attempts at social engineering did not stop with the collapse of Mussolini's government in the mid 1940s. A plaque near the town hall commemorates a second wave of mainland Italian immigrants in 1947.

The second wave of incomers originated from Istria. Control of the peninsula alternated between the Austrian Empire and Italy from the mid Nineteenth century onwards. Finally in the years after WW2 Yugoslavia annexed most of it. Many of the Italian speaking residents chose to leave and some of them were re-housed in Fertilia.

For anyone with a nerdy interest in the more obscure corners of  Twentieth century architecture and design, Fertilia is a crumbling treasure trove. Not just the big buildings, but smaller details - like a concrete fence...

Or the corrugated decoration on the facade of the old telecommunications building...

Or this odd figurine...

I hope Fertilia's twentieth century architecture doesn't get bulldosed, even if is in a perilous state. I am not the only one to have this thought, judging by a sign attached to a wire fence placed around a particularly dilapidated house.

Oktoberfest Sardinia

For three of the past five years we've been in Italy in the early autumn, us and many Germans. Given that the shortest distance between German and Italian frontiers is a mere 30 miles through the Austrian Tyrol I suppose this is to be expected. What is puzzling are the number of families on holiday with school age children

The reason for this was explained to us some years ago by a chatty Mütter mit Kinder we ended up sitting beside on a ferry from Elba. Like in France,  German regions stagger the six week school summer break, some commencing in the first week of July, the others with later start dates up until the end of the month. Consequently, the two week autumn half term is staggered from late September until the end October. This means that any touristy spot you happen to visit in Italy during early autumn is likely to be crowded with holidaying German families.

This is not in itself a problem, but it can have unforeseen consequences. We booked into Baia Holiday Laguna Blu campsite about 5kms from Alghero. It's enormous, with 500 pitches and hundreds of bungalows, more of a resort than a campsite with lots of sports facilities and a waterpark.

Not our thing, but choice is limited in the shoulder season and we wanted to revisit Alghero.

The site is in an attractive situation, across the road from Fertilia beach, located on an umbrella pine covered isthmus with the sea on one side and the lagoon-like Stagno di Calich on the other.

It would be ideal for paddleboarding, sadly it's a protected area. The campsite looks more peaceful than it actually is. The noise pollution should have been obvious if we'd engaged our brains when we looked at it on Google maps. The distance from our pitch to the end of Alghero airport's runway - about 2km! Luckily it's not a particularly busy airport.

However, aircraft noise is not the salient issue. When we researched reviews of the site. - which were mostly positive - one complained of noise from a nearby music venue - particularly during the Oktoberfest. We should have taken note, as we booked in the receptionist gave us a flyer advertising the event which was in full swing throughout the three days of our stay.

It's not surprising we took little notice of this because the booking procedure took forever and was very involved. There were multiple forms to complete, our acsi card was retained as security then finally a blue plastic bracelets attached to our wrist.

The Republic of China's immigration control at Shanghai airport was lax in comparison to the entry requirements here.

Distracted by the shenanigans we failed to address the most obvious question - why is there an Oktoberfest in Sardinia? The answer I guess is that enough folks from the Bundersrepublic descend on the place to make it worthwhile for Munich's Paulaner brewery to sponsor an outreach event in Alghero.

It seems to consist of a series of concerts in Anfiteatro Ivan Graziani, which as you can see from another Google maps screenshot is exactly 560m from our pitch. 

The music is inescapable from 7pm until midnight, an eclectic mix of styles from folksy oirish pop, a dash of disco leaning Eurotrash to bland American- as-apple-pie middle-of-the-road rock.

Even worse are the daily sound checks starting in the early afternoon. Mic-ing up the drum kit seems to take at least half an hour, each part of the kit - hi-hat, snare, tomtoms requires repeated mega decibel testing. Special attention is lavished on the bass drum seemingly channelled through a giant super-woofer which weaponises its thud so even at half a kilometre distance it resonates physically. Inevitably once the kit is set up some roadie or other can't resist the temptation to exorcise his inner John Bonham by entertaining the neighbourhood with ten minutes of frantic licks - more Animal than Led Zep. It's all a bit nerve shredding.

The answer is get off the site as much as possible -  we are here is to revisit Alghero, We spent a week here at Easter in the late noughties. When exactly became a matter of discussion - either 2007 or 2008 was our best guess. A memorable experience helped us decide. We had rented an apartment in the heart of the walled old town, its balcony overlooking an old square with a café - a people spotters paradise!

An Italian general election was imminent, the town was covered with posters. On Sunday morning a gaggle of people in Forza Italia tee shirts spread out across our square posting even more. Then a municipal flatbed truck arrived with barriers to block off traffic and lots of police appeared, not just local ones but military looking types with machine guns. Gaggles of people headed across the square on the way to somewhere else, it looked intriguing, so we decided to join them.

A stage had been set in nearby piazza, euro pop blasted from speakers strapped to lamp-posts, Forza Italia flags fluttered everywhere and an MC attempted to hype-up the crowd in high octane Italian, then the Europop volume notched up, the crowd went nuts and just visible above the scrum people in front of us the top of the head of a small balding man appeared on stage. It's the nearest I've ever been to a head of state, a glimpse of Silvio Berlisconi, surrounded by his posse of lanky long haired blondes, there to provide immoral support. This nailed the date of our last visit, Wikipedia confirmed that there was an election in Italy in April 2008.

It was a moment of excitement In an otherwise relaxed and laid-back week. That's how I remembered Alghero, a sunny, quiet ancient walled city. 

When we cycled into it yesterday we discovered a different aspect to the place, more of a low key Mediterranean resort with a big white sand beach and beautiful umbrella pines on the low dunes

As for the old walled city, it's definitely not quiet these days. I suppose it would be fanciful to imagine it would be given Alghero is well connected by budget airlines to major European cities. Since we were here last Airbnb has blossomed, it should have been no surprise that after we had locked our bikes up by one the old gates when we walked into the old town we joined a scrum of fellow tourists.

The difference came as a culture shock. We remembered the Alghero of 2008 fondly, as a beautiful old city, a little sleepy, a tad crumbling, and aside from our brief engagement with Silvio Berlisconi, a little disconnected from modernity. Today the old streets were crowded, it restaurants overflowing and most shops selling tourist tat. I guess in our tik tok curated world that is just how things are.

Luckily the well reviewed pizza place that Gill had found online had one table free, we managed to squeeze onto it.

I went for a classic with bufalo mozzarella, Gill opted for something more spicy. They were ok, you rarely are going to find a disappointing pizza in Italy, but if you want an amazing one, Napoli is the place to go not Sardinia.

Just down the road was a gelateria, well you just have to don't you.

We decided to seek out the promenade that skirts around the edge of the ancient city on top of the walls. It was much less crowded than the narrow streets. We remembered that it had old cannons, we have some video of Laura sitting on top of one. They have been joined now by a couple of replica trebuchets.

It's a nice place to stroll with a panoramic view out to sea and a backdrop of Alghero's ochre coloured historic centre.

Restaurants and cafés line the esplanade. Since we'd already eaten we stopped in one for a couple of macchiata. Alghero is a very beautiful place, reminiscent of Gallipoli, we observed. 

Sadly, the place is edging towards over tourism, it all felt a bit souless. Maybe our most abiding memory will be the gelateria down a side street halfway between the campsite and the city centre. Oops Gelato! we stopped by twice. 

Gill reckoned the marshmallowy chocolate lemony caramelish concoction she had on our second visit was the best gelato she'd ever had...

Even better than Cremeria San Stephanie in Bologna? We are planning to stop there on our way home just to check 

 In the end three nights here was more than enough. The Oktoberfest's final concert ran from 1pm until well past midnight. Almost twelve hours of thumping bass left us feeling frazzled and exhausted. It was a relief to leave.