Thunderstorms again during the night and a rather wet morning as we left this little gem of a location taking a last walk along the beach before heading south again….
The road hugged the coast for a while, but for the most part any views down to the sea were obscured by trees, though we did manage one quick and rather wet stop to look down on the old town of Gaeta and it’s beaches….
After one accidental wrong turn leading us down into traffic chaos in Napoli which was very much a case of just nudging our way into the traffic in order to get back onto the correct road and cost us a good half an hour of sheer stress and then somehow ending up going through the same toll booth twice costing us 2.40 euros a time we arrived on Camping Zeus, a pleasant enough site, if a little impersonal, right by the entrance to Pompeii….
As it was only early afternoon and the skies have cleared we decided to head straight out and visit Pompeii….
As I’m sure you are aware, Pompeii is the ancient roman city frozen in time as it was buried under 20 feet of ash from nearby erupting Volcano Mount Vesuvius on 24th October AD79. Excavations began in the mid 18th C and are still ongoing. Between 10-20K people were believed to have been living in this wealthy city and historians believ some 2000 would have perished therein. The vastness of the area surprised me and it took us a good 3 hours to just wander around roughly the perimeter….
The theatre and Ampitheatre are impressive structures largely remaining intact….
A project to restore a vineyard is underway with Mount Vesuvius visible in the background….
The ever present mountains of the Appennines running down the spine of Italy providing a backdrop to the ancient ruins and the odd glimpse of life outside the city….
As we wander down street after street, many of them residential and wonder at the stories they can tell….
A few of the properties still retain some of the original interiors which was fascinating….
We wandered through the more sombre exhibition of the casts that have been made of recovered bodies all depicting signs of the trauma they experienced….
An very interesting afternoon….
Today’s stats :
- Miles driven – 87
- Miles walked – 6
- Fuel – £99.92
- Entry ticket – £16.98
- O/N – £19.04
