Wednesday April 29th 2009 - Friday May 1st 2009

Sporting Village and Camping, Mazara del Vallo (ACSI2009-1517) N37.63638 E12.61724

Mazara del Vallo is (according to the book), the first area the Arabs settled and conquered, and the last town they lost to the invading Normans. Sicily does have an amazing history of invasion and occupation, with Greeks, Romans, Arabs, and surprisingly Normans all taking their turn to capture and occupy it.

The site here is reasonably good, it has a nice clean swimming pool, which is open. There is free and plentiful hot water (but not in the washing up sinks), and washing machines that work. There are no fellow GB’s here, but mainly Germans, a few Dutch and a few Italians.

There is one novel feature however. The showers are joint use (ie men and women), they have no locks on the doors, and they a only as big as a “standard” shower cubicle, so consequently once you are in the shower, there is no where to hang your clothes where they will not get wet. The convention seems to be, strip off outside the shower, nip in the shower and hang your towel over the door so that it is obvious it is occupied. As I say, interesting trying to time your shower to coincide with a fit young woman, as opposed to a wrinkly one.

Enough of that, Mazara is home to Europe’s biggest Tuna fishing fleet, and there is a pleasant cycle ride along the sea front to the fishing port. The town generally however is in a deplorable state of disrepair.