25 May 2011 We moved eastward along the north coast to the attractive town of Castelsardo which is built on the side of a hill with a walled old quarter and castle at its summit. The town is well known for its basketwork made from the locally picked dwarf palm leaves which was displayed in a good museum and on sale at the doors of some of the houses. From here we moved into the mountainous interior to the village of Aggius which is surrounded with impressive granite peaks. We stayed at a country restaurant called Il Muto di Gallura outside the village which had superb views of the area. They served us a huge meal of local cooking. ... read more

23 May 2011 It was a bit of a masochistic day. We had been to the Capo Caccia and Grotta di Nettuno by boat on Friday, but today we drove to the cape and walked down (and back up again) the 634 steps to the cave. It was not as energetic an expedition as we had expected and the views were glorious from the top and all the way down. When we got to the cave a boat was just arriving and the passengers had quite an exciting time getting off with the swell that had developed. We then drove 50k to the north west corner of Sardinia to Cappo Falcone which is situated at the end of a long thin peninsular. Close by is a very pretty beach, La Pelosa, with fine white sand, clear ... read more

21 May 2011 Before we left the U.K. we knew that on 22 May, a large annual festival called the Cavalcarta was to be held at Sassari, Sardinia’s second city, and it was something we particularly wanted to see. Sassari has no camp sites but is about 40k from Alghero with a good train connection and the station is within walking distance of where we are staying. So today we did a reconnaissance by train into Sassari and back and it worked really well. The tourist office gave us all the information we needed about the Cavalcarta and we also explored the city, saw its major buildings and preparations for the festival and visited the archaeological museum. We are now back in Alghero and looking forward to seeing tomorrow’s festivities. ... read more

19 May 2011 Our first stop was at the village of Milis where we supposed to be able to buy the locally grown oranges, but we couldn’t find anywhere to get them so they must have been out of season. Not far from there was another Nuraghic settlement, Santa Christina, which was both interesting and very pretty as it was set in a shady grove of olive trees. It contained a single tower 15m high which we were able to climb, a long building of unknown use and an underground sacred well which was in exceptional condition considering its age. From there we climbed over the rim of an extinct volcano on a steep mountain road and reached the coast again at the pretty town of Bosa situated on the banks of the Temo, Sardinia’s only ... read more

17 May 2011 As we left the Tempio de Antas we had no clear idea where we were headed other than we wanted to carry on northwards. The first village on the twisting mountain road was Fluminimaggiore and it turned out to be a delightful place with friendly and helpful locals. It had colourful murals all over the place. Some depicting local scenes and people, some illustrating the business of the buildings they were on and some making political statements. I particularly liked the man size illustrations on the tourist office of the 3,000 year old nuraghic bronze statuettes we had seen in the Cagliari archaeological museum. Inside the office was a picture of a beautiful sandy inlet which we were told was called Cala Domestica and was 15 kilometres southwards along the coast. We had ... read more