Duration
Part of a 28-day Mediterranean tour
When
March-April 2023
Why?
Seeking winter sun in iconic scenery
Etna puffed. A column of smoke drifted slowly skywards above her panda coat of lava-field and snow. It had been a year since she last erupted, but her core dominated the landscape of Sicily’s east. At least the sun shone, offering shirt-sleeve temperatures.
Three weeks earlier, it had been a white-out when I left the UK. Blizzard conditions smothered the windscreen of the campervan, but winter sun – in southern Europe – was on the horizon.
Ever-changing scenery offered all the reasons to undertake a winter trip. Provence provided a blue backcloth to the cypress trees and pines that gave a roadside escort towards the Mediterranean. It wasn’t summer, but instead of UK snow, spring flowers sprawled among the vines above the River Rhône as I travelled through southern France to the border with Italy. By nightfall, I was creeping into an Agricamper site in the Ligurian Alps, just a whisker beyond the French border.
When I woke to blue sky and sunshine, as the only site resident, there was a stillness along the valley. Wild olives and pines adorned my solitary daybreak walk, the silence broken only by the distant echoes of somebody chopping wood.
The Ligurian Riviera
My tour took me along the Ligurian coast, first stopping at San Lorenzo al Mare, a historic little fishing village where the
