In which Sid and Doris take a seaside ride and try to see the sights of Porto Torres
The first job this morning was to get back to the main road. Even car drivers might find the steep, dusty trail a bit of a trial, and Sid and Doris found it hard even to keep their footing and push (sorry, walk with) the bikes.
Once back on the road it is straight into the climb, which all feels quite pleasant. On average we will be going down, though a couple of times we will be climbing off the beach and over the next headland. We have chosen the full seaside. It looks wiggly on the map but the PC mapping says it has less climb than the new road.
The main town on route is Castel Sardo. It looks fine in this picture. When Sid took the picture, what a photograph, his eyes were full of the sail boats moored in the bay. That is not how the camera sees the world. Imagine if you will the boats against the background of the colourful hill town by the bright blue sea. A word paints a thousand pictures, fing.
When we got into town it was quite resistible so we pottered on around the promontory, The car of the day is not called for its splendour or cuteness. It is just against the run of the play that we see a Bulgarian registered motorhome. Epic work, a long way from home and we should know.
All the time Sid and Doris are alert for an Italian to fling open a door or manoeuvre with flair into our path.
At our stop we find the drink we should have been looking for over the last three weeks. It says it is a ginger drink. It seems to be a cross between Crodino, Campari and lemonade (British readers: think Tizer on steroids). It is tasty and highly calorific so we have bought some to drink on the ferry.
The remains of the ride is spent through Mediterranean pine woods. Sounds lovely and largely is, except the roots are disruptive of the road surface and if you do not pay attention you can be almost bucked out of the saddle.
In Porto Torres we have told our host we will arrive at 14.00 and we are a few minutes early. We are shown around our one bedroom apartment, selected because it has a washing machine and we are armed with liquid wash (and some slightly musty clothes).
We set out through the town to buy tickets for tomorrow’s ferry and to understand where to go in the morning. Suddenly we notice the baking heat. Even so we would like to go to the port museum, not open today, and the big villa site, only open for those up for an hour in the sun going around the site. We like a Roman villa like anything and encourage them to cut down the tour, there’s only S & D here and our Italian is pretty rubbish, but no it’s an hour or nothing. So here is a picture of what they think was on the site. (There is a thickish wall there now plus thoughtful excavations and probably jolly interesting at 25C but less so at 35C. Sorry.)
Later we find more information about the port museum. There is some difference of opinion as to what happened near here on the 6th May 1943. As the picture shows, the Italian story is that the fishing boat Onda was sunk (taking, mysteriously, 33 cannon shots to do so, we wondered who was counting). The logbook of HMS Safari P211 (which you can read at uboat.net) says the Onda was an auxiliary minesweeper R106. Either way it was sunk with the loss of seven hands and the locals are not happy about it. Bad timing because Italy swapped sides that October.
We did see the Aragon Tower. Built in 1325 by Aragonese admiral Francisco Carroz as a look out, it is still here now doing duty as a roundabout centrepiece [but it is not very photogenic, so instead I have put in my final seaside #virtualsouvenir which is a wind charm made of seashells, and also another splendid bit of yarn bombing – D.]
Lidl has sold us beer and nuts. Now it is time for a last dinner in Italy.