Volcanos and Beaches

Another random day of contrasts. 

Blue skies showed the storm had passed through, but if there was any doubt it had been through, the rest of the day showed landslides, collapsed roads, trees, walls and buildings now laying on the ground. The sheer amount of water running off the hillsides and into the rivers was impressive, but coupled with a fair bit of the nearby hillsides and anything in its way, the volume and pressures increased.

The Sicilians stoically had already begun the clean up as I woke up in the noisy services car park. 

Once breakfasted, I headed up Etna on the road that does a loop on the south side. It basically winds through the lava fields, with the odd house hiding in the mess of stones to its high point, then drops back down. 

As I climbed up the flanks of this volcano, I was reminded of a trip to South America, where we spent days traversing lave flows to a beautiful volcano, only to have another storm blow through and prevent us from reaching the crater. Etna was being shy as well. This crater summit was hidden in cloud all day, the snow fields however, weren't. 

I caught up with the Unimog based snowplow near the top, then found the road blocked as even the big blade on the plough could not cut through the wet frozen 2m deep snow blocking the road. So that round trip changed. After a play on one of the more accessible mini craters, I decided to drive around the north side of the mountain. 

This took me through a lot of narrow, winding woodland road, all perched on top of lava fields. 

Some tiny hamlets passed by, with the odd folk repairing collapsed walls. At time the road was littered with washed down ball bearings of tiny stones, making braking into a bend a bit hairy. 

Once around the hill, I dropped into a winding valley to climb up over a pass which should have dropped me near the north coast. The last 200m to the col however was lying down the hillside and concrete blocks stopped any chance of me sneaking through.

I consulted the map and found a few options. 1. Go back, 2. 5k of winding unsealed road through the woods, 3. 20k of number 2. Of course I tried 2 first being in the Landy. I passed through my 4th abandoned village of the morning en route to a fallen tree which completely blocked my rocky little fun trail, almost 75% of the way to the tarmac again. Bugger, turn around. I was wishing for my KTM at that point, drop into river, up the next bank and away, but not in 2.5 ton of Landy!

Option 3 looked good until it was seriously washed out, overgrown and a bit of an epic. I walked 200m after stopping and just turned around. So option 1 it was!! 

Once back at the coast, one of the roads I followed had dropped into the sea in one town, people were milling around taking pictures. 

For me though, it was warm, dry and I was still moving...

I fuelled up, sorted more cash out and dug out my actual plans for Sicily. I had 3 days of GPX routes to follow on more unpaved roads to Palermo and the Tunis ferry. So another night on the beach, with warm pizza and wine then I'll try that lot tomorrow.

Something that caught my eye today was the amount of pill boxes near the road and on the coast. I'd guess in WW2, this was heavily occupied by the Germans, so they fortified it even more than the Greeks, the Genoans etc. One to read up on.