Campervan Therapy

On our last morning walk in Fertilia, we discover Porto Conte Natural Park’s Arenosu area. There’s an 11.6 kilometres cycle and walking trail around three mountains, under the umbrella pines.

A noticeboard gives us simple exercises to maintain flexibility. I immediately do as I’m told but Seán skedaddles off in horror. The ground beneath the great trees is scuffed up by the wild boar who live here, along with foxes, falcons and weasels. Hot pine scents the air.

Capo Falcone

On our way to Porto Torres for the ferry to Barcelona, we can’t resist one last detour. We drive up the west coast, past the finger of land which points north, past Stintino, to Capo Falcone.

 It’s an artist’s dream with fan tail palms, prickly pears, a tower that once defended the coast from pirates.

Where once there were pirates, now there’s pedalos. The sea is turquoise in the sandy shallows and indigo in the rocky depths. The cliffs on the peninsula’s west tower above the sea, majestic and brooding. But the eastern side is all shallow, idyllic coves and rocky islets.

Asinara Island

Just off the coast, Asinara Island rises up bare and forbidding. You can see why it was once a penal colony – isolated and imprisoned by sea currents, no one would risk escaping. Now, it is a nature reserve, and excursion boats have replaced prison ships.

PortoTorres

Porto Torres was the first Roman settlement in Sardinia, but it’s the port we’re after today. The workers at the port allow us to camp up for the night as our ferry is at the twilight time of 6.30 a.m. The empty warehouses, with their windowless, blank eyes, are eerie. Once the ferry to Genoa leaves the quayside is ghostly, just a stray cat slinking across the concourse and one young woman walking the port in a little black dress.

Grimaldi’s Cruise Barcelona

Bleary eyed, at 4.30 a.m., we’re queuing for the massive Cruise Barcelona, which is stopping off to collect us. It’s come all the way from Rome. I’m most perturbed when Seán cheerfully tells me it’s so massive because a few years ago they stuck two ferries together.  It’s a maze inside, none of the cabin numbers are in sequence, none of the maps work and Fran the Van is sandwiched in between massive lorries. Walking between them requires a limbo dancer’s skill.

The advertised swimming pool on the top deck is probably lovely when it is filled, but here I am, gazing down with longing on an empty basin.

But, true to form, the four course restaurant lunch is a dream, from the ricotta ravioli to the escalope in lemon sauce and the ripest of melon and pineapple for dessert – and through the window the sparkling Mediterranean.  

But as we pass a very relaxed day, between lounging in our cabin, eating and strolling up on deck, I forgive Cruise Barcelona its empty swimming pool – and it beats haring round the Mediterranean on hectic motorways any day. Not only are we in the right place for one of our favourite campsites, Les Medes, the free A75 north starts at France’s Béziers.