FastsInFrance: Coast to Coast

We visited the Amalfi Coast, staying right on the end in a little village called Marina del Cantone (???). It was incredibly beautiful, but the real adventure was getting there. Seemingly the entire population of Naples seemed to be coming back from the beaches as we were going along the road. It wasn’t too bad in our direction, but the other way it was chaos, complete gridlock for miles and miles, and scooters were overtaking at high speeds, right down the centre of the oncoming (our) lane. It was nuts, people didn’t seem to be worried about anything, they just drove. One thing we couldn’t get out of our heads was one couple who had their toddler on their scooter (no helmet), the mum obviously was having trouble holding him on the back seat, so passed him over to the dad in front, who stood him up holding onto the handles and carried on at high speed. In general, we found people around Naples to drive very without a care – completely ignoring lane markings on the motorway and no kids seemed to wear seatbelts. After a while I started to wonder if I/we are just really uptight about following the rules of the road, strapping everyone in, driving in a straight line, looking where you’re going, all that boring stuff....

One of the quiet moments of the drive where we could relax long enough to get a photo

Swimming on the Amalfi Coast, there were steps directly down from our tent to this little swimming patch

We found the Amalfi coast to be absolutely beautiful but incredibly crowded, and we all felt something didn’t quite suit us, so we woke up Monday, swam in the Mediterranean among the fishes, had a day in Pompeii, and then decided instead of spending any longer on the Amalfi coast we would head cross country to Puglia region (the heel of the boot of Italy). It was definitely the right decision. We ended up in Peschichi, a wonderful little town with a Greek feel (whitewashed houses, set into the hillside), where we found an absolutely brilliant campsite in Peschischi – on the beach but with tons of space around our tent – I don’t think we have a neighbour for 50m in any direction. It was late by the time we got there, but we had a beautiful sunset swim in the Adriatic, swimming both sides of Italy the same day. We stayed here for three nights enjoying the warm and wonderful Adriatic, having a real beach holiday, body surfing in the waves, and getting nipped on the toes by all the crabs hiding in the sand. We’ve also been hiking in the nearby “Forest of Shadows” where we saw a wild boar skeleton on an abandoned path that was quite mystical with tall trees and open areas where all the elves meet to get instructions from the wizards. There was also a lot of treasure from alien planets in the forest – all found and identified by Andy.

Sightseeing batteries fully recharged by days on the beach, we’re all packed up and off to Umbria today....