Advertisement
Published: October 15th 2015
Edit Blog Post
Sicily. Day 6. Marsala
It was a dull start today with damp roads after the ferocious thunder storm at 3am. The thunder rolled and then lightning lit up the sky almost continually for half an hour with very heavy rain. At least it rained at night, but unknown to me our bikes were left out in the courtyard uncovered and my precious Brooks leather saddle suffered somewhat. After a few stops for various riders to don jackets after discovering it was not as warm as they thought we arrived at the bottom of the 720 metre hill in the town of Trapani. We rode along the seafront and then wiggled around the town to get a feel of the place, which was quite ornate and antiquated. A compulsory coffee stop was had at a rather fashionable paved street in Marsala for the princely sum of 1 /2 Euro. I must admit the coffee is very good here, although when you ask for an Americano Grande it actually comes quite piccolo (small). The red wine is also very nice and can be recommended. Moving on we left Marsala and then took a rough, partly overgrown cycle path which eventually lead to
the salt museum. We had a typical Mediterranean lunch of bread, cheese, tomatoes, olives and sardines. The fish were small and had very little meat available and had to be eaten whole including the head, tail and bones. Where are the fish and chips? The museum was quite small but interesting, being guided through with a young man speaking English (of sorts). There are a lot of now derelict windmills around which operated Archimedes screws to pump seawater up into the evaporation beds in June,July and August. These were made of wood since salt facilitates the corrosion of steel in quick time. The salt takes a year to dry out under a tiled canopy after it is scraped off the ground. The poorer discoloured salt goes for industrial use, eg. drying and curing fish, whilst the white salt is for domestic use. 20 percent, of which is exported. We left the museum and headed out of town and joined what turned out to be a very muddy road caused by farm vehicles leaving a field of clay. This was very glue like and clogged up the bike wheels, brakes an mudguards of those who did not ride through the wheel
tracks of passing cars. Sticks and stones and several unsavoury Anglo Saxon words were used to get the bikes moving again. Once at the hotel a hose pipe was commandeered to transfer the claggy soil to then car park floor - most kind, I think. The hotel is a winery as well and at 6pm a wine tour took place which gave us a taste of several wines from their cellar with a price tag of up to 120 Euro. Needless to say the takeup on purchases was limited. They were exceedingly good wines but it would be like casting pearls before swine if we were to buy any. The evening meal was also exceedingly good with a different wine with every course. Very nice and in good company.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.477s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 13; qc: 57; dbt: 0.1332s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb