Italy, Sicily, November 2023 - January 2024. An arduous trip that ended rather traumatically with bad weather. Go to my DestinationMother community page for a full and colourful review.
In October 2023 I lost my mother. It was a very unexpected event. That year I had planned to bring her back to the UK where she had had her fondest memories. Whilst there was great hope I also suffered one of my biggest bicycle accidents in which I am still receiving physiotherapy. This seemed to be the starting point for a series of penitential activity, albeit after my mother died I saw her life as a celebration of her best characteristics.
In November of that year I took to my bicycle again, this time taking a rusty wreck which I had left abandoned for years, and doing a great regeneration on it. The chain had rusted, the crank had rusty teeth, the brakes, gears and bearings had all to be checked and fixed. Why did I select this bike? It was big. I like big wheels. As usual I tested it along a couple of hundred kilometers. During that time I met three girls heading south. I quickly succoured them at a supermarket and invited them to my farm to stay a night. We ate together and headed off south for a 50km farewell trip. They had their own fulfilling destinies but before they left they quested me to reach the pyramids of Egypt. My mind was burning with the expectation. With my mother's ashes in hand I rode north to Barcelona and took the ferry to Civitavecchia in Rome. On arrival I took my mother's ashes and tossed a pinch into the sea. The journey had begun; every sleeping point would receive such a votive offering in memory of this strong-willed independent woman.
That was the beginning of a wet climate too. I am fascinated with ancient culture. It poured buckets. But the grandeur of what was once the center of the Western world is like a magnet to me. I continued south but no sooner had I left was I trapped in a rainstorm. I did something uncharacteristic; I turned back and so spent time in a hostel. There I met two other cyclists. They also had personal issues. They were French and on a mission. None of us knew where we would end up.
For most of this journey it rained and I found myself mentoring these understudies in the name of outdoor camping. They were quite fearful; we tried using Warm Showers as a convenient way for cyclists to get free accomodation. However, most hosts don't reply. It seems to be little more than a quick fix for cyclists to avoid paying for hostels. The one success we had as a group was on the coast in an outdoor water sports club. As usual I took my guitar on the journey and entertained all the way along. We met a female cyclist, attractive, who threatened to join us south. Our band would soon break up though when the cobbled streets heading towards Pompei threatened to rattle my bike to pieces. That's the down side of using apps to dictate your path. I had had enough of following my hosts and said goodbye. In fact, this journey was a record of fantastic biclcye repairs which, by the end of it, I had replaced the front fork bearings, fixed the gears and crank in preparation for the upcoming mountains, perfected the packing of my side panniers, and anything else that need doing. And so I pulled up, remembered that cycling alone is much more fortuitous to me and much cheaper, and then got free entry into Herculaneum. I soon met up with the boys again in Pompei under a torrent of rain. They had argued and split up, but one accompanied me to this ancient city in which I saw one of the greatest monuments to civilisation ever. It was like Vesuvius blowing up again as lightning and thunder hailed our arrival; the streets became like rivers. And like two boats we went our own ways after that.
And so I continued south finding free accomodation everywhere. I came across a farm, Il Gallo Bianco, playing my music for free food. It took a few days for them to trust me but I soon met the family. I redesigned the farm using a permaculture methodology. I was in my element, writing, playing, and gardening. Two weeks I stayed there and it ceased to stop raining. But I lived in a polytunnel with my hammock strung between two posts. Later a couch came in. And there we planted up a eucalyptus with my mother's ashes. We did a lot of planting of fruit trees, an area that has fine soils and lots of fertility. No wonder the Romans got rich on this mountainous terrain; the inland was almost inaccessible to potential raiders such was the continuous fringe of peaks leading down to the sea. I stayed for Christmas and surprised them when I left abruptly before the New Year; my best guitar performances were on the streets of this wealthy town called Scala, also renowned for its ancient history. It is a place to return to, but having had three nocturnal emissions I felt that the food was debilitating my immune system.
My adventures continued all the way to Sicily. I was an athlete by now. I used guile and cunning to move in and out of the weather. There were a lot of closed resort areas that provided toilets and safe camping. The crowning glory of this journey was the Greek temple to Artemis. Having played in a fancy restaurant the night before I quickly sussed out some safe spots to leave my bike, and that night I slept in the temple. This was Sicily. I had already seen a magnificient temple to Poseidon on my journey dating to 500BC; the Greeks had conquered Rome before the Republic grew back to strength and retook the Mediterranean. It's fascinating to know that just as the Greeks were seduced by the Egyptians at Alexandria, so the Romans were seduced by the Greeks in their knowledge of the arts, warfare, and literature. Here was continuity and respect; a history of savage wars against barbarians of the outer world.
My war was to fight against a depleted immune system, a chest infection and the continuing wet weather; I needed Africa, dry and ready to take me to my destination. However, with Carthage in sight and the ferry booked for Tunisia a huge cyclone came up from the south. Everything was cancelled for days other than a return boat to Civitavecchia from where I could transit to Barcelona. And whilst my new year celebrations were cut short when I heard the bad news that my lovely Dora had gone missing, my mind was already set for our grand return having learned from my sister that she returned to the farm after being missing for 10 days. Africa would have to wait.
That was not the end of my adventures carrying my mother's ashes. See the following sequel when I went to India soon afterwards.
