Today, it’s north up the coast road to Paola. Leaving Lamezia is dead easy. Once through the residential suburbs (we never came across any historic centre) it’s head for the sea & find the super straight coast road that runs as straight as a die, parallel to the water on one side & the railway track on the other, occasionally changing their relative positions with each other in a figure of 8 manoeuvre

The road out of Lamezia is lined for several km with empty or derelict, mostly shuttered & overgrown, hotels, apartment blocks or holiday complexes. It is difficult to see whether they are in winter mothballs awaiting resuscitation in the spring of the new season, or whether they have seen better days & are waiting for a developer to breathe new life into the area.

Eventually, these holiday centres & some rusting industrial works give way to a km strip of littered, soft grey, volcanic-sanded beach on one side & the brooding, cloud-covered mountains of the Calabrian spine on the other. A brooding, dense greyness press down onto this range of mountains, a menacing heaviness of threat & doom, leaving the clear blue heavens for the beach.

The beach is waiting for its winter storm damage to be cleared, littered as it is with drift wood, bamboo, old tyres & squashed plastic.

Every few km the mountains recede slightly. Over the centuries humanity has developed settlements on these small pieces of land.

At Coreca, the coast does a little wiggle inland & a narrow arm disappears into some houses & under the railway line. As is my way, I follow this lane & come out to a lovely small beach.

Oh yes….a bar & restaurant, the Mare Blu open & serving; initially, two glasses of cold vino blanco; the sun is shining, the ambiance idyllic; a light lunch & wine is ordered & consumed; a nap just happens. Perfecto. How else to start an Italian adventure.