Most people who holiday in Sicily, and by most people I mean my sample size of Lawrence Durrell and everyone at every party I’ve ever been to who’s ever told me about the gorgeous wedding they attended in Taormina, don’t leave the dramatic volcanic coastlines and baroque cities clustered around the major ports. The interior of Sicily is mafia country, winding unmarked roads climb dusty hillsides revealing occasional and incongruous white mansions surrounded by vineyards, high walls, barbed wire, and CCTV. You would be forgiven for not venturing far into this hot, exposed, shrubby moonscape of an island, were I not accompanied by a local it was unlikely that I would have had the confidence myself, but in doing so you miss out on one of its greatest treasures. Ragusa Ibla appears on the horizon like a children’s drawing of a medieval city – something Chris Riddell might draw to amuse himself. Approaching it from the south, it appears completely isolated in its surroundings, perched precariously atop a promontory, it looks to serve no purpose to anyone other than aesthetic delight – a theme, if you take the time to look carefully, that can be applied to Italian culture as a whole.
Ragusa Ibla is the reconstructed old town of Ragusa, the modern city occupying the next hill over, meaning the two have remained completely separate entities over the centuries. Ragusa Ibla houses the small university, the theatre, the gentleman’s club (obviously) and all the best restaurants. But I was bothered by one question, why? Why do people live here? Why do they move here? What jobs exist in this relic of a bygone era. My local travel companion assured me that it was a vibrant farming community, but I couldn’t see any fields, I could see a number of out of season tourists, university students, and quiet businesses.
On the sunniest day of our stay my local friend said he was going to take me out to the ‘Cava,’ he did not translate ‘Cava’ and I merrily assumed it roughly translated to ‘those rocky hills over there.’ The walk started with an insane clamber off the Ragusa Ibla promontory down into the river valley below and involved many more encounters with thorns and rotting stiles than I had hoped for. But once we had found the river we were on our way, heading out past expensive converted farmhouses and into the wilderness beyond.
Climbing over locked gates with big red signs on them warning, as I can only assume, in aggressive Italian that trespassers would be fed to the boars and used as fertiliser, we suddenly felt like we were a long way from anywhere. A picturesque, but defunct, water mill stood out from its surroundings as the only building for miles, and we made hasty and concrete plans to quit our jobs and buy this little windmill, make a living selling vegetables and homemade pottery at local markets, falling asleep each night to the sound of the little river running past our ears. The sun was warm, heating the pine trees to release the delicious, sweet smell of their sap, the path rose gently away from us, and we walked on in idle dreams.
And then, winding our way up above the treeline, we found ourselves in a whole other world entirely. An enormous ice cream scoop had been gouged out the solid rock, several miles across – and we were right in the middle of it. ‘Cava,’ as the quick-witted amongst you may have already discerned, means cave or quarry, and this one was glorious. A great meandering arc of sloping cliff swept away from us, curling around, back the way we had come. The orange sandstone glowed in the midday sun, and across were tracked improbable snails’ trails of dry-stone dykes, crisscrossing land that seemed far too steep to farm. We were here the walls said, we worked, we owned, we knew this place. I wondered how many generations of farmer had walked out to the edge of the world every day to tend to their meagre flock. I remarked to my companion that I couldn’t believe that farming communities had survived on such sparse land, he nodded, not listening to me.
As we ascended the side of the cava, the path became steeper, and the sun became hotter. We moved slowly, worried about over-heating and running out of water with many miles to go. Reaching the last hair pin bend before the summit, we clambered out onto our second surprise of the day. I had been wrong about the farming. Lain out in front of us was miles and miles of flat, lush, rich farmland, a deep luscious green that was completely invisible from the old town. Although I was hundreds of miles from home, the smell of animal manure and the narrow roads framed by stone walls were nostalgic.
As we walked the ground to the left or right would suddenly plunge away from us into more cava, gouging great holes in the farmland and creating what I can only describe as a fencing nightmare. Our conversation plunged away from us as well, into the murky depths of Marx’s international proletariat, and the perceived connectedness of farming communities across Europe transcending cultural and linguistic differences – we talked with the easy confidence of people who knew nothing.
Back at the hotel, tired, and dusty, and hot, we surveyed with immense satisfaction the view of the hills and gullies we had conquered – we allowed our fingers to trace the little paths, growing less visible in the sunset, and our hands to dip and mould through the air, miming the twists and turns that had taken place out of sight.
I took a dip in the swimming pool to cool off and was informed by the very enthusiastic hotel manager in very broken English that I was keeping up a time-honoured tradition of his Scottish guests being the first every year to brave the freezing waters.