Triscina – Scopello

42nd day

The village of Scopello is located on a small cliff, and from the outside, it gives the impression of being a wild and rural place still very much attached to past traditions. Its name derives from the Greek “Skopelòs,” which means rock.
As you enter following the road, you come across a small village, almost tiny, where life revolves around a square-shaped plaza where most of the local businesses (restaurants, clothing stores, or souvenir shops) are located 😍. It creates a delightful intimacy with a stone trough and terraces where you can sit and enjoy a cold drink.
Homer places the last stage of Ulysses there before returning to Ithaca. According to some scholars, the Isola dei Feaci would be the bay that opens to the coast from a reddish cliff overlooking a blue and transparent sea that delights everyone who comes to enjoy the charms of the area.

Tonight we are staying at the foot of the Dello Zingaro Nature Reserve with a hiking trail frequented by mountain lovers, which is guarded by two watchtowers. The area is surrounded by exclusive villas where some celebrities have stayed and where films like Ocean Twelve or Detective Montalbano have been shot.
It’s no surprise that while walking through its streets, you find what we could call “beautiful people” strolling in their finest attire or dining in one of the local restaurants 😲. We, on the other hand, were on a mission to find a bakery to stock up, and we wandered the streets until we found a small old-fashioned oven that, unfortunately, was closed. However, we did manage to pick up a package of typical Sicilian pasta and a jar of pesto that T says he has never tried and I hope he gets to enjoy before we head back home.

In this destination, we have run into Lina and Gerhart again, and we had a drink in the plaza before heading back home. They are not the only ones we have encountered again because those of us on this route tend to bump into each other every couple of days at the places where we stop. Sicily really doesn’t have many campgrounds for the tourism that travels its roads, so we all end up in the same places to spend the night ☺️.

The northern coast of the island contrasts quite a bit with the one we have traveled so far. To reach it, you cross a series of valleys mostly covered with olive trees to arrive at the mountain range that runs through the entire northern area and ends at the foot of the Tyrrhenian Sea.
We return again to the topic of the roads, which in some stretches are somewhat complicated, but since we are not in a hurry, we take short routes. The seventy-five kilometers today took two and a half hours of peaceful driving, with an average speed of fifty kilometers/hour. The good thing is that it gives you time to look at every detail of the landscape and enjoy it. The downside is that every now and then you encounter a pothole that’s hard to avoid when driving a van 🙂.

A quiet dinner on the porch and a chat while enjoying the fall of night and how the lights below begin to turn on.

Good night… I’ll keep telling you 😘