Day 53: 79 AD

Date: Tuesday 20^th May
Staying: Camping Nube D’Argento – Sorrento, Italy
Distance Travelled: 0 Miles
Song of the day: Umbrella - Rhianna

My best subject when I was at school was Geography. Part of our coursework in my final year was on Volcanoes. This absolutely fascinated me, and has done ever since. The first major recorded volcanic disaster occurred in 79 AD in the Roman town of Pompeii, when Mt Vesuvius erupted, burying the town under a massive Pyroclastic flow (superheated ash and debris). I have always wanted to go there.

While Laurinda waited for the mechanic to come and fix the ‘issue’ with the gearbox (her choice, I offered to stay, but she kicked me out), I caught a train to Pompeii, some 30 minutes from Sorrento. As you pull into the station, you can see a tower, partially standing jutting out from behind the trees. The site is only 50m from the train station.

After fighting through all the other tourists and tour groups, I finally got in amongst the ruins and tried to get lost. Pompeii has been an excavation site since the 1800’s, and still only 1/3 of the place is uncovered. This means that, unlike Ostia Antica (see day 48), large parts are still roped off and inaccessible. This is also due, no doubt, to the large number of tourists that come through. It also meant that it was a lot harder to get lost than it was in Ostia.

The ruins are expansive, and some of the areas are in amazing condition. When Pompeii was first uncovered, there was a large collection of frescoes in incredible condition. Most of these have been removed to a museum in nearby Naples, however there are some left, and they do look amazing. There is one brothel that has been left intact, with its frescoes in place, and some of the villas have theirs. It is beautiful to see. The only down side of the day was the thunder storms that caused torrential downpours and left me sheltering behind walls under my umbrella as thunder and lightning cracked right overhead.

I explored Pompeii for about 5 hours, taking copious photographs before I finally had my fill and headed back to the campsite. And there was Laurinda still waiting for the mechanic. He finally turned up and he turned out to be an old man with a gammy knee who spoke not a word of English. Through pigeon Italian (no sentences, just single words) we managed to explain the gearbox issue (I didn’t say I broke it). After a look, he took me to reception who translated that he could fix it, but we would need to take Jarno to his workshop the next day. So everything crossed, he might be able to fix it.