Olbia - La Maddalena - Castelsardo

After a journey to forget, (plane cancelled, ferry delayed for 3 hours, no dinner) I finally arrived in Sardegna. Olbia is under construction – will be nice when its finished – if it ever is! Good shops, prosperous and trendy but cement mixers everywhere – all building at the same time
There are though, still touches of old Sardegna - a special mention to the octogenarian woman in the tabaccheria in Piazza Regina Madonnina with a jet black rinse in her hair, thick 1960s glasses and fuschia lipstick – fabulous!
We picked up the hire car and got on the road at last and up to the Costa Smeralda. Wrong turns took us past resorts nestled in the hills, invisible from the road, snuggled against the rocks and beneath the trees – really beautiful. The sea is spotless, and you can see down to the bottom, and the blue of the sea plays off the green of the hills and the yellow-tinged rock making each colour seem all the more vivid.
We pushed onto Palau and then with the car on the ferry to La Maddalena. I have no doubt it is bustling in the summer – all establishments were painting, washing, and sprucing up in advance of the May season kick off. The ferry is so easy – there are 3 companies, and 3 ferries an hour. For E42 the 3 of us and the car went there and back and the trip in the sunshine was beautiful – if anything, maybe not long enough!
Lunch was at a hotel recommended in one of the 3 guides I was dragging around with me – and was excellent! Fish that tasted as if it had just been caught that morning, and Mum and Dad managed to get past the visual impact of the large pieces of octopus to actually try it – and enjoy it!
We walked over the road to see the sea and admire the rocks. La Maddalena – and in fact a lot of the coast – looks like one big sculpture project. The rocks have been crafted by time and the wind into the most amazing shapes. The weather must be pretty wild out here at times to have this much effect on the stone.
The weather was settling in in the afternoon, and Dad was making the most of some open road country driving so we zoomed through the countryside slightly inside the coast to Castelsardo where we stopped for the night. The landscape changes dramatically off the coast – with it looking less like the Hong Kong outlying islands, and more like the north of Scotland. Mum was itching to get into an Agriturismo.
Our home for the night in Castelsardo was the grandly named Hotel Il Castello. It is true that you can see the castle from here – and maybe the name comes from the fact that the furniture hails from the same century – the 12th! It’s a bit eclectic – the owner is older than my granddad, and equally sprightly! And we had to be careful on the way in of the moss on the terrace (slippery when wet)! But it was good value and comfy for all its madness.
In the evening we went for a walk around Castelsardo – nothing special – but the view from the castle at the top is lovely and worth the climb. Then onto a pizza place for dinner and a bottle of the local red wine – the first of many!