Treats

We went to see the town of Teulada this morning, because each year they have an international sculpture competition. Blocks of local stone - granite, marble or trachyte - are given to the participants in June, and their work is then judged in September… the works are then displayed in the town. It was foolish of me to have Bernini (or even Tegner) in mind, because when we found these works they did mostly look like big blocks of stone with small bits carved out at the edges….  I am not a sculptor, have never tried carving hard stone, and don't know whether they are having to do this out in the open with hammer and chisel or concealed in a studio somewhere with electric drills, so I have no idea how challenging this competition really is. Fun, anyway.

    

In fact, the beautiful stone stairs in front of the church are more pleasing, to my eye.  The interior, like so many Italian inside spaces, is very very dark. 

Incidentally, the mention of rocks made me look up the geology of Sardinia - which like the British Isles is staggeringly complicated and very old - and, incidentally - not subject to earthquakes. Isn't that a fabulous map?

The town has another whizz arty idea, which is to display nice sun-proof reproductions of works by a painter who was active there in the 1930s, one Cesare Cabras, in the actual places where he sat and painted them. This really is fascinating… you can move around and try to place yourself in the exact position where he must have set up his easel.  Apparently, old folk alive today can identify the people he depicted in his rather good works - for instance, in one large processional painting.  

Otherwise, the town seems a bit down on its uppers. The car population is old, and there are quite a lot of empty shops boarded up.

We went on - westwards, past the large region closed off for military practice (a mini Salisbury plain), and then down towards the coast to find a restaurant which Evan Parker had recommended to us before we left. This is called la Peschieria, at Porto Pino. The landscape levels out into a series of lagoons. He saw flamingoes there. We did not.

The resto is tucked away down dusty hidden tracks, to where a canal feeds seawater into two huge lagoons…. We were the only customers. The elderly waiter spoke no English. But we agreed with his suggestion to have their grand anti-pasto, which is 15 dishes, all sea food.  It was utterly luxurious. My birthday treat. We sat under the sweet shade of a split bamboo roof, with the canal beside us and huge fish jumping out from time to time, like living rainbows. We had tuna, scallops, eel, oysters, mussels, swordfish, sardines, prawns, smoked roe… on and on. It was not just the deliciousness of it all, but the quiet splendour, and the easy beauty of it all.

      

(By comparison, yesterday, on my actual birthday, we had a little picnic lunch at home - tomatoes, cheese, fruit, local crisp bread…. and then for supper a really gorgeous blow-out of supermarket ravioli stuffed with porcini, and served in my own invented sauce of pesto with added oil, garlic and butter).

So, after today’s fishy lunch, we headed on west to see Sant’Antiocco - an island now connected to the mainland by a causeway and bridge….  In the heat and mist it looked magical. We had driven through a horticultural district, stopping at a roadside fruit and veggie stall blessedly cool in the heat of the sun due to the shady roof festooned with ivy…. there we bought unusual pears and green tomatoes.    And we stopped at a little Esso garage on the way to the island where the kind man helped us undo the bonnet to fill the washer bottle…. mille graze.  It looks as if there was once a railway to connect the island - that is now a bicycle track. 

The island considers itself essentially to be Ligurian, rather than Sardinian, due to its historic settlement hundreds of years ago by people from the area of Genoa… and they say the architecture reflects that heritage.  Hard to say, really.    But one thing was for sure.. the main street (a kind of Bond Street), graced with an astonishing avenue of huge overarching holm oaks or some other densely evergreen trees, is cool cool cool, and lovely. The harbour is gracious and open with old and new boats, and old ladies sit in the squares and look benevolent, while gnarled old blokes populate the cafes and put the world to rights.

    

Our drive back to our Tiny House was along the real coast road…. one of the most beautiful stretches of land-and-seascape we have ever seen.   Capes, rocks, golden mountains, greenery, chasms, cliffs, blue blue seas, headlands, and with the sun gradually sinking into the hazy skies of the west… all glorious and ineffable.    

 

We have sat at home tonight with a breeze to keep us cool, too full to need anything more to eat, and contemplating our journey north to Bosa tomorrow.  That’s about 3 hours drive, up the west coast. We will probably go back inland to cover most of the distance.