Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast and that was the cicadas of Sicily

welcoming you to this edition on a Monday morning and what a bright future it looks I'm walking along

the north coast of Sicily I've been going for maybe a

couple of hours now. There's a fine stretch of coast between Capo do Orlando and Brollo.

And that takes you past, well, first of all, an excellent marina where you can see how the

super yacht set live, all preparing for their jaunts out to the Aeolian islands.

And I can see the ghostly cones of those volcanic islands just over to my left on the Mediterranean.

I want to talk about Sicily as perhaps the most exciting place in the Mediterranean.

I can't think of any other island which has so much history going back of course to the,

well let's say the Phoenicians, the Moors, the Carthaginians, of course the Etruscans, the Normans

and all manner of invasions have been across here and every culture has

of course left its mark you can hear the Mediterranean in fine form just over to my left

and I'm having to negotiate I'm now working on the path rather than a road

but there's a big rusty old barrier which I have to try to get past. Italy of course always

full of surprises and to my right there's a single track intercity rail network and a lizard had just

scurried across the path in front of me the main line from palermo to Rome goes through here

and you might be thinking hang on i've got a mental map and there cannot be a railway line from Palermo to Rome because there's a bit of sea,

the strait of Messina in the way, and you'd be quite right.

But I think this is the last remaining train line on which the train goes onto a ferry to take you across to Reggio Calabria

on the mainland. Everything that you could want from a holiday is here in Sicily, including

skiing. Yes, there is. There's culture, there's cuisine and abundance of sunshine.

It's, of course, mid-August, and it's towards the middle of the day, so I'm getting quite warm,

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