The start of my summer holiday was leaving a quite sunny England to arrive an even sunnier la mezia airport in southen italy to join my parents in a sailing holiday around Europe. I met my parents, who looked well and quite tanned, after months of cruising Sicily and Italy.
We made our way to roccella inonica marina, we met a family that had moored up next to us,
a couple in their late thirties with 2 young children- all very friendly, we chatted to them coming and going from the boat etc, and my mum was pleased to entertain the kids whist getting them to hang up the washing, they seemed pleased to jump on and off the boat at will.
We discovered skeleton of a shipwreck on the beach, which we climbed on a bit. Me my mum
and my dad swam off of the beach and used the fold up bikes to cycle into town to collect groceries and essential items including getting a supply of beers (peroni is a light Italian beer that comes in large bottles- very nice imo) and some sardinaian liquore called mirto (that I had tried years back on a family holiday to Sardinia) and a gellati (ice cream) on return...
We sailed to a place called cratoni… historically a town of beattifull women, this may have changed some what in recent years… after a night wandering into town and eating at a pizzeria,
me and my parents started thinking about what I was going to do whilst they went back to England to move house and sign various documents and things. Moved on pretty quickly to a place called ciro-a small pretty ‘out of the way place’ that was free to moor up also.
The next day we went by train to sibari (south coast italy still here) had a panni type thing and and ice cream on the way- very hot and sweaty at that point so an ice cream went down well… it turned out that sibari was “tranquil” to say the least, which some Italian guys we met seemed to understand, even if they liked it a lot… we had got there quite late on in the day, so late in fact that we accidentally missed the last (and only) bus back to the station, thankfully in the end it wasn’t a problem as the blokes who we were chatting to (meaning parents talking Italian to them, and me sitting there asking wtf they were on about) gave us a lift back to the
station…pretty late evening when we got back to the boat caught a little of the England v Sweden game on a tv that had an execive amount of static on it, a delay of the trains due to a strike or something meant that we had a beer or 2 in the bar at the station, complete with a tv and free snacks!
Deciding that it was best for me to stay in ciro the next day my parents anchored further up of of the beach- we swam and I read more of a book id started (memoirs of a geisha)… we went back to moor up and that evening consumed some peroni and maybe some bacradi and coke too thinking about it with my parents….then decided to go to a bar with my dad….set off on the bikes, and whilst paying perhaps less attention than I should have lent and turned my head to see behing me, just at the same time as going of a speed bump…managed to get my self some attractive scrapes and cuts, so didn’t make it to the bar in the end. Despite my enthusiasm for a good evening thought that the wisest move probably was to turn round and put iodine on grazes, and plasters on fingers….woops!!
My parents left me in ciro for a week with some cash and keys to the boat. The windsurfer boom I found out was also binned when my dad chucked out the other bits, meaning no boom, meaning no windsurfer L, still I cycled about town using the net café and exploring places, spent a good deal of time on the beach and dosing about the boat, reading more of my book and eating lots of pasta salad and olive oil in various different forms (salads, bread etc etc)…a little dull to some extent, but very relaxing none the less.
On one of the later days a fisher man explained that I would need to leave the quay side and go out of the harbour as all of the fishing boats must us that bit of the harbour that afternoon- this was a little bit daunting as it meant motoring my parents 47ft yaught and anchoring it somewhere then returning it the next day single handed….any way that’s what I ended up doing which proved to be easier than anticipated, and I met my parents at the harbour side on return to help catch the ropes etc…and guide me using exaggerated hand signals, that resembled some form of expressive dance…so as I didn’t smash it up…or something…. 
more photos can be found at:
click here 4 photos
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