Sicily

Sicily changes its character as the road turns. The west is dry and wind-scoured, with limestone hills, dark wine cellars around Marsala, and the medieval streets of Erice sitting in cloud above the plain. Moving north and inland, the land rises into the Madonie mountains, where oak woods and sheep tracks replace the olive groves. The centre is a country of wheat and bare clay hills, with abandoned sulphur workings and farmhouses whose render has cracked in the sun. The east is different again. Etna's black slopes dominate everything, and the old lava stone of Catania walls its streets in grey. In the south-east, the Baroque towns of the Val di Noto carry their balconies on carved faces and grotesque figures, and near Agrigento the temples stand on a ridge above almond trees.

A good day here begins early. In Syracuse, the island of Ortigia is still quiet before the market opens, and the light comes off the harbour in long bands onto the honey-coloured stone. Fishermen mend nets on the quay while bakers push trays out onto the street. Later, the road to Palermo runs along the north coast, and the city opens in noise and colour: markets, church bells, a plate of arancini eaten standing up. Further along, Cefalù sits beneath its rock with its fishing boats drawn up on the sand, and the old lanes climb steeply to a cathedral that catches the afternoon sun. In Catania, the evening is for granita and for walking the black-stone streets, with the mountain still visible at the top of every cross street.

What lingers is less any single view than the way the island keeps its own pace. You leave a town feeling that you have only half understood it, and you want to return to the stone, the salt, and the sea light. The coast, with its small harbours and its long empty beaches, is part of that wish, not a separate attraction. Staying a while means watching the pans turn pink again at dusk, and understanding why people who leave Sicily so often find themselves planning their way back.