Going to Trapani was a must for
us – partly because of its north African links and varied history, but also as
one of the most westerly bits of Sicily bar Marsala (which we drove through en
route to Trapani). Having decided to drive round the coast of Sicily we could
hardly miss off the west coast. It was an interesting drive too, with working
salt pans on the outskirts of Trapani – move over Maldon!
We’d heard some pretty dire
reports of Sicily’s west coast from other travellers, and particularly the
levels of rubbish washed up on the beaches, so when we parked up we enlisted a
bit of help from the local patron saint…
All we found was about a
metre of slowly rotting weed along the shoreline instead! The sea state was
rough and the wind had been strong and on-shore, so no surprises about the weed
– but apart from that, it wasn’t that grubby at all. You can just make out some
of the square, low houses that are influenced by architecture from Tunisia and
elsewhere along the north African Mediterranean coast in the next picture.
Like much of the rest of
Sicily, Trapani delivered on some fine baroque buildings and was not too big
for us to enjoy a pleasant wander, taking in the architecture and hunting for a
gelateria. It would have been a top place to have idled away a few hours over
lunch, but we were still beached from the enormous arancinis we had eaten at a
road-side stop. They certainly make them big here!
One of the other reasons we
wanted to go to Trapani was to visit Erice, a hill top mediaeval village with
views (on a clear day) to Tunisia - which can be reached by cable car from the
town. Unfortunately, this is as close as we got as the weather turned and Erice
disappeared into the clouds…
So off we headed, past more
disused and crumbling tuna canning factories towards Capo St Vito on the north
coast of Sicily, where we planned to spend a few days ligging about on a
campsite that looked promising (and had been recommended by some other
camper-vanners on the mainland) with maybe the promise of a bit of yomping in
one of the two natural parks on the headland.
It was certainly set in a
spectacular location, nestled at the foot of this hill/mountain-ette – which
was very popular with climbers.
Unfortunately, Camping la
Pineta wasn’t what we’d hoped for – serried ranks of pitches in gloomy woods, surrounded
by scrubland and with loud music at the pool and bar until late … I know this
sounds a bit old fart/ ‘if it’s too loud you’re too old’ etc – but we had
deliberately chosen this site as it was billed as a relaxing and picturesque
stop over. Indeed, sometimes shaded sites are great – this one just seemed oppressive
– and a mediocre, busy and concession dominated beach didn’t help!
The weather had also
darkened along with our mood, so we decided after just one night to cut loose
and take the back road over the hills to Segesta in the interior. It was only
on the way out that we noticed that Capo St Vito was described on the
multilingual signs as a ‘resort’ – we clearly need to hone our research and
planning skills!
This campsite experience was
also a bit of an object lesson for us, as we have found no reliable correlation
between reviews of campsites on the ACSI app we use and how we actually then find
them ourselves – moral of the story being to go and have a look and make your
own mind up - and on balance, most of them have delivered!
The ACSI app is, however,
dead good for route planning/ navigating in areas where they have campsites, as
they use map tiles with a lot of detail (more than our paper map) but not so
good when you get to a bit they’ve not got the tile for. So we used it to
navigate our way over the hills out of Capo St Vito to Segesta – along a route
that our faithful old paper map was telling us was partly unmade… the landslips
(this was just one of many) were an additional feature!
Maybe we should have guessed
from the fact that all the signs for Segesta were really faded and not always
pointing in the same direction, that this was not one of the more popular
routes up over the hills to the ruins. It was, however, a good adventure and we
were glad that we had deliberately built the camper on a van with a strong
chassis and good ground clearance – we certainly needed both on this journey!
The road may have been old
and sometimes simply not there, but at least it brought us directly to the car
park for Segesta. Again we’d managed it for the middle of the day so it wasn’t
too busy. This ancient site is famous for having a temple that was left
unfinished (to the inexpert eye it doesn’t look that much different I have to
say!) and an amphitheatre with a truly exceptional view.
As usual, there’s a bit of a
yomp involved in getting to the best bits. You can get a shuttle bus up, but we
decided to walk. This picture is taken about a quarter of the way up to the
amphitheatre, with the van in the car park below.
This is a view back to the
temple complex from a bit further up the hill…
Here’s a view from the top
in the amphitheatre, looking over the hills and plains – and the motorway – in
the background.
The amphitheatre has been
partially restored (you can see the smaller stones used in the next picture)
but for me this is a bonus, as you get to appreciate the scale of what it must
have been like to sit and debate in such an amazing location.
We stopped at the temple
itself on the way back down. For any Greek temple aficionados amongst you, apparently
you can tell it was unfinished from the little square bits sticking out of the
base of the pillars in the next picture.
It seems that the Carthaginians
invaded and the temple was left incomplete. But as with all the others we’ve
seen on Sicily, it’s still pretty impressive!
And so, with what might be
our last Greek temple experience on Sicily under our belt, we headed off on the
motorway we had seen from on high to a site near Palermo – our next stop.
S.
"..serried ranks of pitches in gloomy woods.." love it :-)
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