Despite the melting heat of a a sirocco blowing in from North Africa, Go reader Celia Donoghuefound much to impress on the island of Sicily
EL BAHIRA. Even the name sounds African, and one can forget how near Sicily is in climate and culture to that continent. Until, that is, you are sitting in the middle of an oven-like sirocco wind at almost 40 degrees.
We were five: two adults and our family of two girls, 19 and 17, and a boy of 12. The girls pronounced the main purpose of the short holiday was to acquire a tan - the boy wanted to swim, swim, swim - we just wanted to do some major chilling out. And to a large extent Sicily provided for us all.
An air-conditioned mobile home on the El Bahira campsite, three kilometres from the beach resort of San Vito Lo Capo, was the very pleasant accommodation. Long breakfasts and evening dinners on our deck while periodically sauntering up to the very large, spotlessly clean seawater pool with plenty of deckchairs - until the weekend, when the Sicilians arrived in droves. But they added great colour - they like their pop music at full belt and they dance, young, old, boys, girls, in and out of the pool.
Meanwhile our very helpful Keycamp courier, Wayne, gave us tips on where to go and what time the soccer matches were on in the campsite bar. To our surprise there were quite a few couples, minus children, in the other mobile homes, mainly English and Irish.
This campsite doesn't go in for the hectic activities that many French sites provide, and one Irish family there thought it very quiet. So if you want your younger children entertained every morning by an English-speaking courier, go elsewhere. But if you simply want ground-level accommodation and a splendid pool, you could do very well here. There is a basic shop on site, the bar is always open, and the pizzeria opened on some evenings - mid-June was still the off-season.
The air-conditioned car was fairly essential, we concluded. We made trips to Erice, a medieval mountain-top village, and Segesta, where you can see a Greek temple in almost perfect condition and a Roman amphitheatre.
Walking any distance was not on the cards, so it is well worth paying the €1.60 for the bus that brings you from the temple to the other ruins.
Another trip was to a very large nature reserve, named Zingaro, south of San Vito Lo Capo. You park your car, pay a €10 family entrance fee and then take your pick: you could go on some very strenuous walking trips for hours, or take a much shorter one down to the glorious little stony beach, where a little herd of wild boar, including their young, appeared.
If you are a keen walker, a springtime visit would be very rewarding: the nature reserve cultivates trees and plants that we didn't notice anywhere else in the parched soil of the island.
San Vito Lo Capo, on the northwestern tip of the island, about 40 km from Trapani airport, is a small town with a stunning sandy beach and the fairly nondescript restaurants and market stalls of any resort.
Hiring an umbrella and two deckchairs for a few hours cost us €20, which seemed excessive - a meal for the five of us cost only twice that. But it's a very safe beach with a natural sandbank and a lifeguard, so it was worth it at least for one trip.
Shopping for food was in the fairly limited Sisa supermarket - otherwise, all that was on offer were beach balls, African souvenirs and so on in the market.
If you want, you can take a boat trip around the coast, or various bus trips. The scenery is magnificent - rocky, rather Texan in places - and the greens and blues of the apparently very clean sea were simply gorgeous. We had no rain, but a few too many mosquitoes despite the endless sprays we used.
I would go again - but not in June. If that sirocco had lasted more than 24 hours, it would have made all movement simply out of the question. But once it passed, a wonderful place for a holiday.