[ charlesarmstrong ]

[ 22:37 sunday 3 may - asinara, sardegna, italy ]

seated on a rock in the mirror-flat sea several feet from the shore. i leapt here from the white sand beach of cala sabina, ghostly pale under the half moon. the limbs of the bay stretch in from either side, silhouetted against the star-spattered sky. the nearest artificial lights twinkle on the coast of sardegna twenty-five miles away. i can make out the town of porto torres by the concentration. the only sound is the gentle shush and heave of the water moving against the rock and sand.

this island of asinara is one of the most strange and beautiful places i’ve been. it’s ten miles long and five miles wide with a human population of no more than forty. in 1885 the freshly-minted italian government designated it as a high security prison and relocated its community of five hundred shepherds and farmers across the water to sardegna’s nurra peninsular. shortly afterwards a quarantine station was opened for mariners with contagious diseases.

during the great war austro-hungarian prisoners of war were interned on asinara. five thousand of them died here. the ethiopean imperial family was incarcerated on the island during the italian occupation of their country from 1936 to 1942. during the 1970s the facility was used to intern high-level mafia criminals. with poetic irony certain of the judges leading the prosecutions against these same figures also took up residence on asinara for their own safety. in 1991 the island was designated a national park. in 1997, after one hundred and twelve years, the penitentiary facilities were closed down and people started being permitted to visit under strict controls.

what remains is an environment of astonishingly pure nature punctuated by grim abandoned penal structures. the combination is jarring, emotionally confusing.

just two days ago, sitting in the trampery, i decided to escape from london for the weekend and impulsively acquired a return flight to alghero in north-west sardegna. i made no plans for what i’d do once i arrived. claudia kindly sent me a message with a few suggestions. as soon as i arrived i became curious about asinara. in alghera i asked people if there was somewhere i could stay on the island. a lady in the council office said she thought visitors could stay in the old barracks.

so i rented a car and drove fifty miles to the tip of the nurra peninsular where i stood looking across to asinara. there was no sign of a quay or ferry so i drove back south to the nearest town, stintino, and picked my way down to the compact harbour. i learned that there was one boat each morning crossing to the southern tip of asinara. someone also had a mobile phone number for one of the people working at the barracks on asinara. it took several attempts to get through but when i did i was told i could stay.

not wishing to spend the night in stintino (which felt one-dimensionally touristic) i continued south and arbitrarily took a side road to a tiny hamlet with the fabulous name of noddigheddu. this consisted of seven single-storey stone houses arranged around a green. one of the houses was abandoned and the roof had caved in. an elderly lady called giovanna had two rooms where people could stay. i dropped my bags and continued down the dirt track to the coast. just before sunset i was walking on the long deserted beach when thirteen flamingos appeared magically and noiselessly in the azure sky above me, wheeled slowly around where i stood watching, then returned the way they’d come.

this morning giovanna plied me with sardo biscuits and told me some of her family history. her great-grandfather had been a farmer on asinara, part of the community forcibly depopulated by the state in the 1880s. after breakfast i drove back up to stintino and down the track to the quay. the boat was waiting for me. i leapt aboard and we were away across the sparkling water. arriving at fornelli i hitched a lift up to cala d’oliva at the north of the island and dropped my rucksack at the barracks. then i set out on foot and spent the rest of the day walking. except for the three staff at the barracks i haven’t seen another soul.

this is a tough landscape of granite outcrops and hardy low shrubs populated by wild donkeys, goats and birds. about five miles north from the barracks i crested a hill to find a jaw-droppingly beautiful view spread in front of me. a shallow white-sand beach with turquoise sea breaking against it, low woodland behind the beach, a headland extending to the east surmounted by a crumbling genoese watch tower. this was cala d’arena. i picked my way down through the scrub and reached the beach. there was no sign anyone had been there in weeks. the only footprints were from birds and donkeys. the detritus washed up over the winter remained undisturbed.

my excitement at the opportunity to explore and photograph was in conflict with my reluctance to disturb the pristine environment. i trod lightly and sparingly with my heart in my throat. i remembered the excitement in kirmo’s eyes when we walked through ancient untouched forest in lapland. after exploring the beach and the lagoon behind it i picked my way along the rocks to the watch tower then came back over the scrubby headland to the beach. i discarded my clothes and swam in the chill clear water. my first swim of the year. the current was quite fast at the edge of the beach so i did not go out far.

later on, back at barracks, i was served dinner alone in the mess. nobody else is staying. then i walked out to the rock where i sit and write now. tomorrow i want to hitch a lift down to cala reale to explore the cluster of old prison buildings there.

: c :

[ 17:41 friday 28 september - piazza dante, napoli ]

sitting on the plinth of dante’s graffiti-laden statue in the centre of the piazza waiting for maurizio, a talented performer of the city’s traditional music and street theatre whom i met a year ago on stromboli. there’s a band warming up on a stage to my right. the early evening crowd ebbs and flows around me.

napoli overwhelms the senses. this decaying, anarchic, spectacular city grips and fascinates me like no other. its vitality is uncontainable. every facet of human possibility is found here, crammed into this this highly unstable patch of ground.

: c :

[ 19:53 monday 29 july - cala tonda, isola san domino, italy ]

the sun descends into a purple cloud-bank spanning the horizon. the turquoise sea glints golden in these final rays. i sit watching cross-legged on the bone-white rock.

after our adventures in the mountains christian and i decided to come out here to the tremite islands, clustered in the adriatic near the puglia’s heel. this is the only group of italian islands on which i hadn’t set foot.

my expectations were not high. i imagined a few featureless islets smothered in concrete villas and knick-knack shops. the reality is much more wonderful. there are two inhabited islands and two uninhabited. the total population is below four hundred. most of the history and population is on san nicola. most of the tourism is on san domino where i sit.

the dominant rock is limestone, riddled with fossil shells and bleached white by the sun. the dominant vegetation is the scrub and pine which once stretched along the adriatic coast. the south-eastern side of the island is a warren of secluded coves and sea caves. the north-western side faces the prevailing wind and is much more rugged and windswept.

there are three or four hotels which look like they were built in the seventies but overall the island feels undeveloped. the main settlement seems to have grown out of the streets and houses constructed by the mussolini administration to accommodate political prisoners. there’s no sign of any structures that pre-date this.

the first thing we did on arrival was find somewhere to stay. after several false starts we found a hard-as-nails pugliese crone who reluctantly rented us a room. she seems to have us marked as trouble-makers and she’s watching us like a hawk. next we rented a couple of bikes and zipped off to a cove for a swim. the sea reminds me of pantelleria, turquoise green and hypnotically clear.

cycling off-road at midday when the temperature is above forty degrees has a remarkable effect on one’s metabolism. it’s simply impossible to get enough oxygen. one swiftly becomes light-headed and intensely exhausted. on the hills i found myself needing to stop every couple of minutes and stand panting frantically waiting for my pounding heart to return to something resembling its normal pace.

this afternoon we’ve been exploring the north-west coast with its spectacular outcrops and bays. the rock samphire is in blossom and its pungent odour is carried on the air. the rocks are also dotted with beautiful tall-stemmed flowers topped with round seed-heads. my camera has been busy.

it’s doing my spirits a power of good to be here.

: c :

[ 23:08 saturday 28 july - piano imperatore, abruzzo, italy ]

i’m sitting on a limestone crag at the edge of a vast grass-covered plain, one and a half thousand metres up in the appenine mountains. the plain is ringed with mountains reaching up to three thousand metres, some forested on the lower slopes and some barren rock. everything is on a massive scale.

christian and i reached the plain just before sunset, after a tough trek through five miles of forested gorge rising nine hundred metres along its length. christian’s asleep now in our tent atop a flattened hillock below my current vantage point. the wide landscape is bathed in pale light from the not-quite-full moon. dogs barking at a shepherd’s hut the other side of the plain echo among
the mountains, reverberating sometimes beyond a second.

every sunday for the past four weeks i’ve cycled to waterloo station in london, slung my bike on the train to norbiton and visited my step-granny mary in kingston hospital. she was admitted in june with intestinal problems. i found her with one tube going into her wrist, another in her nose and an oxygen mask to help her breathe. her first comment to me expressed mortification that her “old ladies’ feathers” hadn’t been trimmed.

when i got up this morning i learned that mary died in the day’s first hour. a week on monday would have been her ninety-first birthday. she celebrated her ninetieth last year by going sky-diving, earning her a measure of notoriety in the world’s press. her decline in the last couple of months was sudden.

mary was a magnificent lady, full of spirit and laughter. she and my grandfather were married in 1985, shortly after my grandmother’s death. their twelve years together were ludicrously happy.

my initial visits to the hospital were chatty. i took flowers and a big photograph of a labrador puppy to tape over the television screen beside her bed. she wasn’t afraid of death and was curious about what, if anything, might come afterwards.

last sunday mary was a lot weaker and less responsive than previous visits. her speech was barely audible and much of the time i was there her eyes remained closed.

previously i’d asked if she’d like me to read her anything. her eyes had lit up and she’d asked for dickens’ “the old curiosity shop”, adding it was her favourite. so i brought a copy with me, rested it on the pillow beside her head and started reading softly just a few inches from her ear.

i couldn’t tell whether she was following the story or not but it wasn’t important. in two bursts i completed the first chapter. at some level i understood it was the last time i’d be with her. i cried more than i wanted to and lingered when it was time for me to go.

this afternoon in penne i bought a funerary candle and added it to my rucksack’s contents. now i’ve come to sit vigil for mary in this beautiful place. the candle is burning on a rock just in front of me. through tonight it will be visible for miles around, a point of light in the vastness of the plain.

: c :

[ 17:00 thursday 31 august - monte cucudo, calabria, italy ]

this is fantasic! i’m on top of mount cucudo in the aspromonte, eight hundred and twenty metres above sea level. far below me is the town of cittanova, which i left an hour ago. beyond the town the olive-covered plain spreads west to the tirrenian coast twenty kilometres hence.

far to the north i can see the cliffs of capo vaticano. to the south the rising peaks of the aspromonte jostle away into the distance. most magical of all, centred in the glittering horizon, is the black cone of stromboli. even though it’s eighty kilometres away i’m half convinced i can hear its eruptions, whose pattern and sound are etched so deeply in my consciousness. is this some acoustic freak of the mountains or just my imagination?

this morning i woke at seven and phoned gaetano. the sun was shining but he said rain was coming and we must postpone our walk. sure enough within an hour it was tipping down. i was a little crestfallen but this afternoon the sky cleared so i came out with my camera. i started exploring a dry streambed, following the rock-strewn channel away from the edge of the town. after a while i realised my feet were taking me up the mountain so i simply carried on and here i am at the top. i took a couple of false trails and wound up picking my way through thorns, but mostly it was easy to find the way. it’s not the day-long hike i had in mind but it would be churlish to lament that.

yesterday evening michele told me that “cucudo” (the name of this peak – also written “cuculo”) is the local word for a single hailstone. there’s a  completely different word for the plural. the dialect here is lovely.

: c :