UMBRIA, TUSCANY AND BEYOND - AN ITALIAN TRAVELOGUE

VISITING MOUNT ETNA I've written before about Mount Etna - the huge volcano which dominates northeastern Sicily and which has a history of eruptions that have played such an important part in the island's history. The last big eruption took place in Spring 2021 and there are currently three active sites on the side of the mountain. On this visit I took the plunge and decided to go on a coach tour up the mountain - wary of the fact that the tour outline suggested the some might find the thinner air up there a bit difficult to deal with. Thankfully I needn't have worried - it all turned out to be fine. I was forunate in having an extremely knowledgeable guide who herself lived in a village on the side of Etna. She seemed to know the history of all the settlements on the seaward side of the volcano and could identify the different lava flows and their characteristics as our bus wound its way up towards the summit. We finally stopped at the Sylvestre crater and we had the opportunity to walk round that; for the more adventurous there was a chair life up to higher level. I passed on that one. This is a perfectly safe trip - uneven ground the only potential hazard and I felt priveleged to have had this close encounter with what one might call extreme nature! It's one thing reading about a volcano in the books and seeing pictures on TV - it's quite another to confront it directly - albeit with the aid of a bus!!