Everything is Green and Summery: Naples to Pompei.

April 30, 2015

I quench my thirst on orange juice, eat my fill of cereal with yogurt and follow with open cheese and salami sandwiches, my final breakfast in Hostel Of The Sun, which I finish off with a bottomless cup of coffee while browsing on the netbook. I have a message in the journal guestbook from Nigel which makes it clean he enjoys my journal, so that's a turn up for the books. I reply in gratitude before finally packing my panniers to check out.

The receptionist can't quite believe I'm leaving, having been here nine days, it seems forever; for me anyhow. Good to be moving again, even if today's short ride is all along city-streets; twenty-five kilometres to Pompei.

Out on the street I've the awful Traffic to start off in. Finding a gap to move out into. Italian drivers don't give an inch, that is the impression I get. Crossing the street is dangerous if you're not careful; though riding a bike, well, if you exercise usual caution and commonsense, you're fine provided you have the fitness to ride at a steady medium to fast pace and experience in city-cycling; being able to read the traffic.

Pompei is connected to Naples by continuous urban sprawl around the bay south and up the lower slopes of dangerous volcano Vesuvius, which erupted as recently as 1944. Avoiding the autostrada, I'm on the main other route through a series of towns, over bumpy uneven cobblestones and other places with uneven flagstone paving. But with the Dawes bike underneath me, with it's resilient steel frame stabilised by four panniers, one either side front and rear; rolling on solidly built touring wheels and a gear to keep me spinning smoothly, the ride feels like a tractor across a ploughed field.

Another point is I'm carrying no food, nor fluid weighing the bike down: the bike lighter than usual, lending itself more readily to weaving through gaps in backed up traffic and easy acceleration out of harm's way in the aforementioned traffic, which waits for no-one: it is everyman for himself.

I arrive in Pompei shortly after noon and quickly find a hostel I looked up on Hostelworld on a little street off the main piazza. Pulling up outside the glass door, the reception man come out greeting me. Then asks have I a reservation. "No." He returns in and come out with a paper printout table of bookings. He checks coloured boxes on the table for available beds, then nods his head saying sorry we are fully booked. He then recommends I try Hotel Apollo, on the corner of the piazza. Says they may have a single room for twenty-five euros.

It is an old building, perhaps saw better days and the matron running the hotel is a chancer. Forty euros she asks, then when I say it is too much and ask, how about thirty, she instantly come down to thirty, I think she may've even come down to twenty-five if I bargained a little harder. With breakfast? I ask. "Si. Breakfast." She shows me to my room, which is small with a single bed. The shower and toilet is in the corridor. When she is gone, I ignore the notice "No washing clothes in washbasin" rinsing out the sweaty clothes I rode in; then find the metal roller blind, which would give me access on to a balcony to hang them to dry, is jammed shut. So resort to hanging the clothes on the back of a chair.

Showered and changed I laydown on the bed for half an hour, then it is time to go out and look for lunch.

The morning was warm and not seeing much through the jammed window-shutter, I go out in shorts and tee-shirt, but very quickly feel underdressed when walking across the piazza. The sky having gone dull uniform grey and a stiff breeze blows, making it chilly, like a Scottish seaside town. I return back. Put on jeans, my thermal vest and a fleece-jacket.

I lunch on pizza and beer at an inside place on Via Roma, a street whereon is the main entrance gates to the ruined Roman city of pompei, with souvenir stalls along the pavement outside and stalls selling Bob Marley, Dark Side Of The Moon and union jack tee-shirts. Then return across the piazza to have a coffee and kill time until four o'clock, as I don't want to be going into the ruins too early, preferring late when there's better light for photographs.

The previous time here, it was just before noon, the sun blinding overhead and therefore a complete waste of time taking pictures. Today the light would be subtle. About half five or it could've been six, the sky goes a mystical yellow over the ruins, the cloud has broken up revealing the sun hovering toward the west and later contrasting golden rays with deep blue and graceful puffs of clouds in brilliant afterglow over eerie environs of what remains of a city. The walls of houses, the roofs gone, arranged along a grid of flagstone paved streets with raised sidewalks; and pillar columns standing in rows, supporting nothing, standing stark against twilight sky, what remains standing of temples along a large piazza, all empty except for the echoing chatter from a large group of Italian school children somewhere near.

I soon give up reading interpretation boards. The main one to do with the morning of the twenty-forth of August AD79, when there is a tremor heard in the direction of nearby Mount Vesuvius, shortly followed by a loud bang and a colossal column of vapour and gasses rise from the mountaintop, which by afternoon would suffocated the city's inhabitants and later ash fallout buries the city.

I remain until after sunset when a loud siren sounds, informing visitors that the gates are soon closing. Having only lunched at three, I'm still full of mozzarella and as I have already spent forty euros for the day, I return to the hotel and make do with water before laying down to sleep.

For milling flour. Hard work for those operating it, walking round in circles.

Wine cultivation was uncovering during the digging, seeds having survived, were propagated and planted and growing here in the exact same garden where they grew before the disaster struck. Photo through a hole in the wall.

Wall artwork in an eating establishment.

View along a side street with Vesuvius cloaked in cloud.

Final view along a street before an attendant requests me to come on. The gates are shutting.

The amphitheatre on my way out before they shut the gates for the night.

Today's ride: 25 km (16 miles)
Total: 3,229 km (2,005 miles)

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