Going Greek in Paestum (Poseidonia)

Settling into the campsite (Camping Athena) at Paestum was a welcome relief after the beautiful but challenging drive along the Amalfi coastline. The site is right on the beach and we struck lucky with a pitch at the edge of the sand. That’s us in the middle of the picture.

The beaches here are like the ones we have come to know and love in southern Italy – some concessions and some public access bits. This one is different for us as the campsite has its own (private!) beach that lets onto a long stretch that can be walked in either direction. Like elsewhere, it’s not as clean where there’s no concession, but at least it’s wide enough to take a good stroll!

Most evenings have delivered fantastic sunsets over the Amalfi coast, which is now to our north and west – and most evenings have also seen many of our fellow campers out to capture the clichés with their cameras - just like us!

One of the reasons we chose to stop here was to look at the ancient Greek ruins of Paestum. Like many parts of Italy as we head south, the Romans captured and then integrated into their culture what had been thriving Greek colonies. The size of the temples was breathtaking as was their incredible state of preservation.

That, and fewer visitors made for a very special afternoon. Although a lot smaller in scale than Pompeii, the effect of being able to wander round unhindered and unaccompanied by hordes of people lent the site a magical air.

Paestum also has a really interesting museum on site, which meant that many of the artefacts recovered there were on hand to see – a real bonus as much of what we didn’t see at Pompeii was in the national museum in Naples, which we didn’t get to.

And to top it all, just as we were meandering our way towards the exit and our cycle back to the van, we spotted a Hoopoe head-butting the grass as it searched for food – and it then very obligingly flew off within camera range to deliver my best wildlife action picture to date! We’ve not seen one of these since we left Oliva in Spain last year.

We plan to head off to our final stop on the mainland tomorrow before the ferry to Sicily – but it’s not the easiest of places to leave whilst the weather is so good….

S.