Jones

The weather is getting hotter so whilst we walked Flynn south along the beach we hummed and hawed about staying another night. We almost did – it would;d have been our first two night stop this month but, in the end we decided we’d get bored looking at the sea for a whole day.

We packed up and headed south towards Sibari or, Sybaris to any Ancient Greeks reading. Sybaris was a very large city – probably twice the size of Pompei with a storied history. It has been destroyed and rebuilt tree times. The Achaeans founded the original city in 720 BCE. Sybaris was noted for high living and parties. It’s where the word sybaritic comes from. Some other Achaeans from the next door city obviously got annoyed by all the music into the night so they sacked the town in 510BCE. The effete Sybaris cavalry taught their horses to dance to flute music. The wily (and luckily musically gifted) attackers played the same tune as they attacked and killed the dancing cavalry. Allegedly.

Sybaris was buried under 6m of wet tilth until it was discovered in the 30s. It’s also below the new water table so very little of it has been excavated. What they have excavated has proves very worthwhile with decorative brickwork, mosaics and other olden days decorative stuff.

Like all of these things it doesn’t photograph very well. We’d hoped to see some of the impressive finds from the site at the nearby museum. First we had to navigate Apple maps increasingly erratic directions through local fields.

When we finally managed to get to the museum we were shooed away as it’s being renovated.

We tried another seaside spot but it didn’t appeal – maybe we’re just not seaside people. Instead we turned right into the mountains. We were diverted off the SS177 onto single track village roads before finally crossing the Cole dell’ Esca and dropping down to the Chisetta Di San Lorenzo parking on the shores of the Lago di Cecita.

It’s a middle of nowhere car park with a tiny church (clue in the name). We have to walk 50m through an alpine meadow to get to the lake.

We’ve parked facing the sunset across the lake, the view is lovely.