We flew back to Sardinia by way of Olbia in the north of the island as it has a direct flight to Gatwick which is easy for us on the train. We were supposed to arrive at 20.15hrs so this required an overnight in Olbia as the last train for Cagliari leaves well before our flight arrived . We had booked ‘B&B Alliso’ on the internet and it was fine for our purpose, not far from the airport, clean and modern and with a number of restaurants in the vicinity. We were nearly an hour late, around 15 minutes on the flight having caught up a 30 minute delayed departure and then one passport inspector for the whole flight……….. 40 minutes later we were able to find the luggage with only a short wait and get a taxi to the B&B. We found a nice Trattoria just down the road where we appeared to be the only non-Italian customers. Friendly service and good pizzas with carafes of house wine relaxed us after the journey.
After a rather strange breakfast with tiny portions of many items set out we were able to walk to the station and catch the train to Cagliari. It takes 3 hours but was no problem. Splice floated as we left her other than a thick coating of brown dust from a couple of rain/sand storms.
We have spent the past few days readying her for departure including : replacing all the external moveable items removed for the summer break/checking and testing all the equipment, chart-plotters, VHF, engines etc/cleaning her down, we have had to wipe every square inch of the boat and will still need to have another wash down before we leave/replacing the exhaust hose for the port engine which had rubbed partly through/re-running the cable for the wifi box through the innards of the boat – that’s sorted one of the problems but we still can’t get internet that way, back to using our new Italian SIM card/restocking the boat with food, beer, wine and other consumables as we pretty much stripped her out before leaving.
We have also been exploring all the marinas in the town as we have decided that we will over-winter Splice here. After a bit of touring about we have settled on Marina Sant’ Elmo and booked a berth there from mid October. It’s a bit out of town but the security is much better than the current marina and we have heard good reports about them. The staff there were also very helpful and professional
We’ve done one ‘tourist walk’ up to the Citadella on the hill to wander around the oldest part of town and visit the Cathedral. It’s a steep walk but worth the effort, it’s just a shame that the area giving the view we wanted over the boats was fenced off for renovations. The Cathedral was beautifully decorated and not overly covered with gold as we saw in some Spanish churches.
We have one new toy on board – after we tried out Pascale’s kayak in Cala Covas a while back, we decided to research them and have bought one the same as his and shipped it to Cagliari whilst we were away. She’s a bright red ‘Solar’ made by Gumotex and has been named ‘Fizz’. We will introduce you to her in due course. She’s been inflated but the water here is so mucky we don’t fancy splashing around!
As we now want to head north up the east coast of Sardinia we are waiting for the wind to change from the strong northerly of the last two days and then we will be off.

Photo: street decoration in the ‘Citadella’