April 21 Marinella di Selinunte Camping Athena

My stomach bug had me up in the night. I did have an illuminated temple to gaze upon though. This morning we decided we definitely needed a rest day tomorrow so I could do a clear-liquids-only 'starvation diet' if my potato diet doesn't fix me up. We set off at a reasonable time, but by the time we got to the first village I was starving. We visited its supermarket for bread, water and bananas, and I ate hugely of the latter. Then Heather realised that it was Wednesday – and all supermarkets and alimentarie shut on Wed afternoons – so back for things for dinner and more potatoes. Finally a visit to the supermarket toilet. By this stage we were old friends with the girl on the desk and said fond goodbyes.

We left town on a magnificent downhill with almost 90 degree sweeping views of a vast cultivated valley with hills and mountains stretching beyond . At the bottom we stopped behind Phil who was peering worriedly at his GPS. It transpired it was beeping at him on the descent. Did we want the good news or the bad news first? Because he now knew where we were, but it wasn't where we were supposed to be. We had to – yes, you guessed it – climb back up the way we had come. Our faith in the GPS severely shaken, we started slowly back up, with many mutterings. Once safely at the top again, Phil divulged that it was a case of 'operator error'. Hmmmm!

The old village was more charming than it's new part, with a cathedral and ruined castle on its highest ridge, and a dense jumble of ancient houses clustered between and below. The GPS has strict instructions to avoid busy roads, so it and its operator this time this time navigated us through the steep and tiny streets (which would be laneways in Australia) without any beeping. At the bottom of one so steep that only Heather had the courage to stay mounted, a toothless, elderly lady in well-washed apron appeared in her doorway, and tried in her slowest and very best Italian to explain to Heather who has 'un poco Italiano' (and so a whole lot more than the rest of us) where this apparently lost little group in its extraordinary clothing needed to go next. The GPS agreed with “a sinestra' (to the left) but when the narrow paved road became a rocky, dirt track, with deep puddles to skirt some of us harboured secret doubts. Keeping them to ourselves, we followed Phil until we finally found ourselves in an incredibly lovely valley of scattered farmhouses surrounded by all manner of fruit trees in blossom, interspersed with veggie plots, and surrounded by ordered fields of olives and grapes, punctuated here and there with stony outcrops and 'wild' trees. Yellow buttercups, mauve thistles, and dense deep pinky-red, pea-like flowers and different white ones lined the roadway.

At the first intersection, the road we were supposed to take had a barrier across half of the road, and signs telling us there was a 'deviazione obbligare tra 7 kms'. Eventually we decided to take the road and hope we'd be allowed to proceed.

We stopped for lunch (bread and bananas for me) in deep shade and gazed upon the loveliness before us. After some steep climbing and when we were close to Vita, the next village, we came upon more road signs, and an earth barrier designed to be impassable. We wheeled the bikes around it, and then around a landslip where the downhill side of the road had dropped about 2 feet, leaving asphalt crevasses. Meanwhile cars were deviating as obliged!

Passing by Vita, we went on to Salemi, which was on the top of a hill, then rolled down through vineyards and olive groves to Gabellina. On the way we took a side road looking for somewhere to camp. A friendly girl pointed out that the earth wasn't very smooth. Since almost every square centimetre had been ploughed for spring planting, this was a bit of an understatement. We ploughed on, and Heather suggested we catch a train to Selinunte, our target. It took us to Castelvetrano, and Phil and the GPS led us by quiet back roads and olive groves to Camping Athena with its attached pseudo temple 'de Pizza'. A spartan campground for a two night stop, but the acqua was indeed caldissimo, and the caretaker affable and helpful. He was very proud of his labour-saving motorised mini-chariot – a sort of stand-up-in Vespa wheel-barrow. He rolled across the campground and returned with two plastic chairs for us, and then made separate trips for more chairs, a washing line and pegs and another plastic table. Finally he rolled off with our passports to photocopy them, and then rolled back.