Beside the Seaside

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In Which It's Just Like Being In New York

June 28, 2008 by Mike

Route: Isola de Femmine - Palermo - Corleone - Prizzi - Termini - Messina - Villa San Giovanni

A long day: Palermo, Corleone, a terrible storm, a brilliant stretch of road, back to the mainland. Lots to pack in.

Two bad things about Palermo:

One
I saw the aftermath of two traffic accidents. (I'm trying not to go on about the driving. Don't want to bore you, or sound like I'm whining.) The first - a scooter upended. No sign of the rider. The second had clearly been a very slow speed collision at a road junction. Minimal damage to either car. It had happened moments earlier, and the woman in the front passenger seat of one of the cars was still sitting there.. holding an infant child in her arms, and with a toddler standing in the footwell of the car, between her knees. And no, she wasn't wearing a seatbelt. So if the car had been travelling 10 or 20 miles an hour faster at the time of the impact, with the force of her body propelled forward, she would have killed both her children. With her own body. Simple. I must have seen 50 cars with kids held like this today. Every day. Driving badly. The parents should all be in prison.

Two
Remember the nice folks in the Siracusa Tourist Office tipped me off about a 'culture park' at Palma de Montechiaro dedicated to the great Sicilian writer Giuseppe Tomasi, Principe de Lampedusa? That it was "near Palermo"?

Yeahrrrrrright. Turns out it's near Agrigento. I rode past it two days ago without realising. Dangnabbit. So even when the bloomin' Tourist Offices here are actually open they give out duff information. Curses.

Followed by three good things about Palermo:

One
The catacombs under the Capucin Monastery. Blimey. I've never been into a proper catacomb before -- complete with thousands of dead bodies, done up in their finest clothes and tied, 'lifelike', to the walls, mostly skeletal but some partially mummified so that hair and skin cling to the bones. And a handful, including a dead baby girl of two or three years old, so perfectly preserved they look like waxworks.

A couple of days ago I wrote that riding with the sea on my left is freakydeaky. It isn't, by comparison. The catacombs are.

Two
I fell into conversation with a British tour guide outside the monastery. Kathryn has been coming to Sicily for 30 years and more. Loves it, though she allowed that her first job here had been a bit of a nightmare. She got a position nannying for a particularly troublesome (and well-to-do) family.

"The mother used to come into my room after midnight and start going through my things. I'd just lie there - terrified! I suppose they were worried about kidnappers -- this was the time when the Getty boy was held to ransom, but you're too young to remember that," she said, (graciously, if not entirely accurately). "Anyway, it all got too much and I did a flit one night. Escaped from the house when they were all asleep!"

Commiserating but unable to compete with that horror story, I told her about my troubles with the tourist office.

"But that's them! The Lampedusas! I was working for his son and daughter-in-law!"

Which is how I got to know, from Kathryn the tour-guide, that the Prince of Lampedusa is buried in the cemetary behind the Capucin Monastery -- not mummified, just yer regular, common-or-garden crypt. And here, alongside his wife, he is:

"Once a year, all the graves and plots are decorated by the families," Kathryn continued. "The graves are scrubbed clean. Flowers everywhere: it's a lovely sight. All except this grave, for some reason." She gestured to the Prince and Princess. "It's a shame." It's another sign she was right to get out of that house when she did, if you ask me.

Three
An exhibition of 'Spanish Art 1957-2007' at the Palazzo Sant'Elia.

OK, so one of the good things about Palermo is actually Spanish.

There were a couple of Dalis, assorted works by Miro, Munoz and one Picasso. Actually, it's the kind of exhibition where there'd be a painting by Juan Picasso and they advertise it as having art by 'Picasso'.

I also enjoyed a 1970 painting by a collective called Equipo Cronica entitled "La Salita (Las Meninas)" -- a modernist update of "Las Meninas", a seminal work of Spanish portraiture by Velázquez. And the only reason I know or mention this? Because a few weeks ago in Figueres I saw several versions by Dali of the same painting.

It's like bands who do a cover version of a classic Elvis song -- but in their own style. Which, in my head, I now realise, makes Fine Young Cannibals the Salvador Dali of pop music.. and that can't be a bad thing, David.

Having enjoyed the ride inland yesterday, I decided to do it properly today and visit Corleone - over 30 miles from the sea. Enough to make me dizzy.

I'd read somewhere that the locals don't appreciate being gawped at by tourists come to see "the town where the Mafia comes from", after it featured so prominently in The Godfather.

Well, you might reply, don't be the real life home of real life Mafia bosses like " Michele Navarra, Luciano Leggio, Leoluca Bagarella, Salvatore Riina and Bernardo Provenzani.".

But if you'd lived long enough in the area where Notting Hill was filmed, you'd probably be a little more sympathetic.

I stayed for lunch, 14 local men and me in an badly lit bar, at least half of whom looked like ruffians and ne'er-do-wells. But they didn't shoot me in the back of the head. Not that I asked anyone for a cut-throat shave, and I didn't have my children baptised, nor did I offer them points in my new Las Vegas casino; also, I neglected to make them an offer they couldn't refuse. (Instead, I asked the price of a coffee and sandwich, and paid them what they asked for.)

After the huge valleys and wheat fields I'd passed through, the streets of Corleone seemed particularly narrow. Just enough space to hide. It was deathly quiet -- or maybe it was just naturally quiet, as I had happened to arrive at lunchtime.

By the way. The old castle in Corleone is called Castel Soprano, which I think is a nice little nod by the makers of the TV series that has taken the American Mafia myth to a new generation. Or is that common knowledge? Do Sopranos fans know this?

This is a big country.

Beyond Corleone -- I was making a day of it and returning to the coast via a circular route -- I rode across valley after valley. The fields were golden. The houses isolated, run down and all of them hiding mafiosi on the run. Probably. The hills to the south were tall and handsome. The horses were photogenic.

The sky was clear and blue.. as long as I looked north to the coast. But to the south, beyond the hills, clouds were colliding to form a thunderous cloak across the sky. Lightning! And as I rode up to the lip of another valley, I suddenly saw the rain.

Here, have a look for yourself.

Quite rainy, I think you'll agree? Compared, say, with the blue sky above the horses.. a photo taken 20 minutes and ten miles away, but pointing in the other direction.

And that was the problem. I was pointing towards the rain, for the moment, but knowing that my road would curve left and head back towards the sea (and the blue sky) any moment now. The question was.. would I reach the turn before the storm? I didn't dare do a U-turn and ride back to Corleone -- where everybody would surely come out of their houses to laugh at me for not braving a little rain -- so I pressed on. The storm was heading up the valley. The lightning was dramatic.. and frequent; the thunder louder than the bike. Eeek. I wanted to film the rain but didn't dare take the time to do it.

Let me put it this way. The storm was so strong and the rain so heavy that a car coming the other way gestured to me to ten round. Yes. You read that right. An Italian -- a Sicilian! -- who actually cared about another road user. If word gets out he'll wake up one day to find a horse's head in his bed.

All the while, the song in my head was Race With The Devil by Gene Vincent. (Especially that incredible guitar intro.) Which, it occurred to me, given both the weather and the location, was particularly apt.

The devil took pity.

I escaped to the coast untouched by a single raindrop. Within an hour, as I was telling my new best friends about the storm, they didn't realise I was talking about today. "Rain? In Sicily? You're kidding, right?" Reuben shook his head. Delsey (did I catch that right? Spell it right?) looked up at the deep blue sky and must have wondered if I had sunstroke. Two young, friendly bikers over from Malta for a weekend's riding -- at home there's not so much asphalt to ride, thogh on the other hand they know where both the island's speed cameras are. They were having just as much fun after two days as I'm having after two years.

We were sharing coffee and conversation at a motorway service station. Yes - motorway. The coast road east of Termini is the Autostrada so I got to ride fast for a bit. And then.. I kept going. Even though there's an old road that weaves around the craggy coastline, it was much more exciting -- *thrilling* -- to stay on the motorway. Bridge. Tunnel. Bridge. Tunnel. Bridge. Tunnel. Bridge. Tunnel. You get the picture. Tunnel. Bridge. Tunnel. Mile after mile of incredible engineering. Tunnel. Bridge. Tunnel. Much of it completed in the last few years -- either that, or my map is hideously out of date. Tunnel. Bridge. Tunnel. I wasn't expecting this.. inbloodycredible. Tunnel. Bridge. Tunnel.

The tunnels are the thing: very long, very frequent and wide enough for everyone, even weedy bikers, to enjoy. And the bridges follow as bright light follows the darkened tunnels. As we burst out of a tunnel it's straight on to the bridge heading straight for the middle of the hill on the other side of a steep valley. There's no concession to the contours of the land -- the road just ploughs straightahead. Being on the inside (riding clockwise) I can hardly see the sea, but I get to consider instead the few hardy houses on the landward side of the motorway. They had incredible views down the valley and out to sea.. until the bridge was built and took away their view.. and their sunlight. Man, the people who live here must hate the Autostrada.. as much as I'm loving it. Guilty pleasre.

A Top Ten road.. intense and memorable and hardly a curve in sight.

Bridge and tunnel. And Mafia. It's just like being in New York.

Sicily: short and sweet.

14 miles and 76 hours after arriving, I'm on a ferry back to across the Straits of Messina.

I'd have stayed on the island until morning if there'd been anywhere to stay, but the only bsinesses on the northeast coast are icecreameries and bars.

Instead, after breaking camp every morning in Sicily despite my back burning with early-morning pain, I've found a cheap pension in Villa San Giovanni. The bike's parked safely -- in the restaurant on the ground floor. I've had to promise to get up and out early so they can open for breakfast. Deal. But now - bed. It's been a long day.

Beside the Seaside

In Which It's Just Like Being In New York

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