Arbatax

 We continued our slow progress south arriving in the small port of Arbatax on the 15^th of July, where we met Keith and Doreen.  If one of the things we are doing is finding out about different lifestyles and how to construct a new life for ourselves, then these two are a very interesting example.  Keith is sixty and a retired fireman from Coleshill in the West Midlands and Doreen is a Londoner in her mid-forties.  They met when Keith was cruising around Spain in his catamaran “Atreyu” about eight years ago and over the last five years or so they have created a life which seems to suit them remarkably well.  They spend their winters in Coleshill, where Doreen works in an Asda Supermarket and their summers in Arbatax.  In April they load their old Mercedes up and drive from the West Midlands to Sardinia, where they prepare and launch the boat, then spend the summer cruising and socialising.  Doreen speaks good Italian and they have a wide network of friends in Arbatax and Coleshill and seem to enjoy the change from one place to the other and getting the best out of the two very different cultures.  As Keith says “our friends at home assume that we must be rich to have this lifestyle, actually it costs us no more, possibly less, than living in the West Midlands all year round”.

I guess the nearest we’ve come to getting a taste of the “real” Sardinia has been in Arbatax.  Basically it’s a small town with a large but relatively little used port.  Inside the port is a small marina, also half-empty, with very friendly and helpful staff.  On the quayside is pretty bar and restaurant decked out in blue and white painted pine boarding under the shadow of an enormous boatyard which builds gas and oil rigs and is a hive of noisy activity.  From Arbatax runs a little single-track railway into the interior, open only in the summer for the tourists.  We spent a day on it stopping for a “typical Sardinian” lunch in the little town of Sadali.  The train comprised a small and very old diesel-electric unit pulling two very worn out and graffiti covered carriages.  We had a three-hour ride up into the hills with the train having to edge cautiously across many ungated and unmanned level crossings, tooting its whistle to warn any approaching cars.  The train had two guards (one for each carriage) and two drivers (one to steer and one to read the paper) and most of the tiny stations had at least two staff and an immaculate office with a mahogany desk and large posters of timetables and regulations.  The countryside was greener and more fertile than I had imagined, with vineyards and olive groves giving way to cool pine forests on the edge of which grazed horses and cattle.  Everywhere motorists and people working in the fields would stop and wave to the engine driver, as to an old acquaintance.  Sadali, when we got there was closed and after our “typical Sardinian” lunch of salami, bread gnocchi, roast suckling pig and fruit, there was little to do except sit in one of the town squares with some of our fellow tourists and watch three or four kids kick a football around.

The next evening we hung around Arbatax port with Keith and Doreen for the start of the annual town festival.  There were crowds of what seemed mainly local people being served plates of mussels by members of the local fishing cooperative from two enormous steaming pans.  There was a small funfair, where we rode the dodgems and went on one of those big cars shaped like a boat which swing up and down, pendulum fashion until you feel queasy.  Oddly, the centrepiece of the evening’s entertainment was a display of Portuguese folk dancing.

As we motored out of the harbour on our way down the coast, Arbatax and its hinterland made me think of all things of rural Ireland, although without the clouds and torrential rain.  A world where people do what they do, projects get half-finished and tourists are treated with low-key hospitality and perhaps a degree of puzzlement as to why on earth they’ve come here when they probably have their own perfectly good homes.