Freya & Us

We fly home to Bristol tomorrow and our last day in Sardinia has been beautifully sunny and warm. While we are looking forward to getting back for Christmas and seeing family and friends we are not looking forward to the weather.

We've kept ourselves very busy over the last few weeks with a mixture of sightseeing, shopping, boat maintenance and relaxing - I think there is a song "busy doing nothing" which describes more than a few of our days - we never cease to be surprised at how quickly the hours in a day pass.

On the boat we've replaced the topping lift and stereo, serviced all our winches and sorted some of our headlining issues. The later is an unbelievably messy job. The foam behind the headlining disintegrates and you get covered in sticky black powder. We have more of this to look forward to next year as we will be coming back with some renovation kits to tackle the fore cabin, forward heads and some bits of the main saloon. We also varnished some woodwork in the cockpit - best thing we can say about that is that the intense sun next year will tone down the colour quite quickly - we hope.

We've done a lot exploring in and around the town. A long walk up the local mountain (big hill?) with good views of the old town and the salines (loads of flamingos). We visited the archeological museum which was particularly interesting as we saw lots of finds from the various ancient sites we have seen across the island. There is a roman amphitheatre and punic necropolis in the town as well. Both were well worth a visit but the amphitheatre has been used to stage concerts and is covered in modern seating which ruins the feel a bit. Apparently this will be removed and the roman bits it hides restored over the next few years.

We also took the train to Iglesias, a small old town about an hour or so from Cagliari. The usual churches, remains of the city walls and lovely lunch. It's the centre of the now largely defunct mining area of Sardinia and is home to the mining museum. This looked as if it would have been very interesting as it also includes tours of the "test" mines bored under the town by the students from the local college of mining - but it was closed!

It's sea urchin season here and the park along the promenade by the marina has been transformed by a number of pop-up cafes, selling white wine and barbecued sea urchins. While we are usually keen to try most food, the hassle involved in getting around the spikes to the flesh in the centre didn't seem worth the effort.

On a final note we need to apologise to the Italian bus system. After a poor start, it's almost as good as the one in Spain! With the bus arriving at a bus stop within one of two minutes of us getting there. Connections seem to be even better! Hopefully it will work as well tomorrow when we head for the airport.

Click here for the interactive map of our travels