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.
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