A Sea Bathe at Cap Sant' Andrea

In writing the text material for these pages, I've relied heavily on my photographs as a reminder of what happened and when on the trip. I have no photos for the morning before we arrived at Cap Sant' Andrea and I now remember that it's because I was too terrified to take any.

Paul and I had decided the night before that we would be getting to the beach on the scooter that we'd rented for the week. I'm not in the least ashamed to admit that I was extremely apprehensive at the prospect of negotiating the Elban switchbacks on the back of a scooter - I was too preoccupied to take any pictures before the ride and to occupied with staying on the machine during the ride to even consider it. As a result, I have no idea what we did for breakfast or anything else before getting on the back of the thing.

Hats off to Paul - he very considerately coached me in survival techniques before the ride ("Lean, but not as much as you would if you were steering") and was very gentle in his driving during the trip to C St. A.

I didn't enjoy it. We were following Nora and Jim who were also on a scooter. At one point they stopped at an overlook to admire the view. "HANG the view" I was thinking to myself - "let's just GET there!" Get there, we did. Alright, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be but I decided not to get on that scooter again if I could help it (and I didn't - I managed to get rides in cars for the remainder of our Elba sojourn).

Note: the image of us on the scooter at the bottom of the page is a crap, Photoshopped recreation staged on our patio in October. Helmets WERE worn on that trip and all others.

Nora, Jim, Paul and I made our way from the parking down to the beach. The proper sandy beach in the town was very small and already very crowded. We already knew from our kayak recce that the place we wanted to be was the rocky area around the end of the point. Nora and Jim settled temporarily at a spot on the rocks, I continued around the point to investigate. I ran into Graham and a few of the others a little further on. We found a lovely spot on the rocks just above an immense rock pool which was mostly isolated from the sea by a long, humped rock wall that looked like the back of a whale. It turned out that we'd "found" the Mecagni's perennial swimming spot "La Piscine" the "swimming pool".

I went back to let Nora and Jim know where we'd gotten to. I found them having a bathe and joined them in the water. The water was amazing - greenish-blue and very clear. The terrain under the surface was incredible - huge boulders and crevasses. We paddled about for a little while and then made our way along the water's edge to our little encampment.

The scene really was quite extraordinary. We spread our towels on the rocks several feet above the water on a sort of terrace of boulders and ridges. Adjacent to our encampment was a huge crevasse which formed a ravine on the landward side and a long, narrow pool where it entered the sea, "La Piscine". Protecting the pool on the seaward side was that long "whaleback" of rock. At the far end of the pool was another fantastic pile of boulders. The rocks themselves were light grey and rough but with a surprisingly regular pattern of white, crystalline chunks embedded in them. The surface, where it wasn't rough, was downright sharp - one had to be careful how one moved. I was a little surprised that with all the physical activity no-one got badly scraped up before we left for the day. Paul did get a rather nasty cut on his finger - probably from the edge of a shell.

We spent the next few hours swimming in the pool, climbing on the rocks, exploring the ravine where Paul and I both found some attractive pieces of broken tile, and jumping off the "whaleback" into the water. I read for a little while and listened to my silly playlist that I'd prepared for the trip. Along one side of the pool there was a narrow cave opening. Graham (and Austin?) and I ventured inside and found that it went back into the cliff a surprisingly great distance - sixty feet or so. I made it all the way to the end - the others balked when they saw that the surface of the cave wall was crawling with little bugs.

Several lovely, lazy hours spent in a place of extraordinary beauty. It was a wrench to leave. God bless Graham who agreed to swap his place in the Giulietta and ride on the back of the damned scooter.

Dinner in Poggio

That night we enjoyed the last of our three grand meals out, this time at the Trattoria Sciamadda on the town square in Poggio. Paul and Mamma and I walked up from the villa, meeting the rest of the party in the square at dusk. The buildings in the square were warmly lit against the deep blue evening sky. The Sciamadda is a lovely little place, decorated with quaint old movie posters and advertisements cut from magazines. A table near the back has old theater seats as chairs. There were candles flickering on the tables - we enjoyed glasses of wine and mineral water and watched the light fade in the square outside.

The meal was fantastic - many delicious courses including these wonderful, delicate little breadcrumb-crusted, fried fish which we'd had at another meal there earlier in the week. During the meal, the band (Nora, Jim, John) set up and played several songs in honour of those celebrating birthdays. There was much shouting and dancing from the front of the restaurant. I didn't join in, being in a more reflective mood (sorry, Carolyn). It really was a lovely evening. The staff at the restaurant were very friendly and very good sports at being invaded by a raucous crowd of Americans (of course, the whole thing had been set up in advance - we had the entire place to ourselves). Once again, my thanks to Laura and Mauro who made such wonderful arrangements on our behalf.

A delicious chocolate cake rounded out the meal and we descended, laughing and chatting into the square and then down through the alleys to the villa and bed.