Pompeii

20th - 21st October

The route to Pompei

We next headed past the sprawling urban metropolis which begins at Solerno, en route to the legendary ruins of Pompeii. The drive there was initially very scenic with huge ranges of mountains on either side of the autostrade, but this soon gave way to a seemingly infinite mass of development. Even when we hit the coast, as far as the eye could see and on all sides we were surrounded by blocky buildings and high rise flats. Onwards we went toward Pompei and onwards the sprawl went, as if we were surfing a housing wave being channelled inland by the mountains and occasionally spilling to sea. It was funny that by comparison the normally scary Autostrade became a calm, ordered paradise in comparison. This was how we felt as we came off it a stop before Pompei to pick up something for lunch. As we exited the Autostrade, immediately we were hit with what should have been a smallish suburb (according to our map), but which turned out to be a chaotic, overcrowded, noisy and confusing monster with little in the way of signage and a kind of "fend for yourselves" attitude of the native drivers. We managed to fight our way into a side street where we were able to pick up some groceries (and local cheese of particular note) for a brief respite. The store owner and his daughter were incredibly friendly and we ended up getting some tomatoes on the house. The little girl had started to learn English and although a bit shy, we managed to coax a bit of "Hello" and "How are you?" from her, although the full version of "Keep Right On" was a bridge too far.
Back into the fray and we headed straight for Pompei this time and again as soon as we exited the Autostrade it was bedlam. Less encouraging was that every car we saw had some kind of scrape or dent in it, and this is not exaggeration. It was getting late by now and we just needed somewhere to put down and found Camping Zeus straight off the motorway. Camping Zeus was fine for what we wanted, which was just a safe place to leave the van as we visited the ruins and a hot shower. We did have a bit of a debacle where we paid the extortionate 5 Euros for an hour of internet time only for most of the sites we wanted to look at not to be found. As this included sites like the www.bbc.co.uk we knew there was a problem, but the site manager insisted that "the signal is perfect" and therefore there was no way he could give us a refund. His obtuse attitude and refusal to even attempt to understand the clearly demonstrable problem was intensely irritating and counts as a customer service - FAIL. Personally I'd avoid it like the plague now, but at the time it served its purpose.

Pompeii

We visited the ruins of the ancient Roman town of Pompeii (the Roman ruins has two ii's, the current Italian town only one) on the 21st October. It was pretty awe-inspiring and it needed little imagination to bring it to life again. We spent a long day exploring the ruins and I'm so very glad we did. There were still a few things we missed out on but by the time we went back to the van we were so exhausted we just hit the hay. After spending a good eight hours we got a really good feel for the town and how the areas were lade out and I heartily recommend doing the same if possible. It reminded me a bit of Poole town with it's urban areas, public buildings, sports stadium, theatres and purpose-built brothel (the Poole comparison falls down a bit there). The brothel was an interesting building for it's prestigious place in a well-to-do neighbourhood (it was the "official" brothel after all), it's sexual paintings, and also the child-like signs of a "cock'n'balls" - indicating the direction of the brothel - found on the roads and walls of the neighbourhood. Being a small building we had quite a wait to get in, and it was all over very quickly. There was also a sign saying "No Flash" which I thought was ironic.

Away from such filth, I was amazed by the Amphitheatre which was just beautiful in it's "forgotten" state. The design of the stadium is an oval with banks all around and special sections for the media and dignitaries. Against this backdrop of immaculate design there are now banks of grass growing over the spectators seats seemingly pulling the amphitheatre into the earth. It was a wonderful sight.
The mosaics found on the floors were also of great interest to us. There were lots of geometric designs employed to create elaborate patterns and in one of the more wealthy homes was a complete battle scene describing a famous battle won by a Macedonian king. The detail and scale of the image was amazing. The interiors of some of the houses had also survived and it was very interesting to see how the inhabitants decorated their homes. There was a definite fashion of the time and in the same way today styles are copied and fashions come and go you can see repeated designs throughout the site. Another thing that hasn't changed is that the folks of Pompeii had pictures of their family painted on the walls in the same way people have pictures now, and also pictures of coastal scenes and favourite escapes. There were columns and even extra rooms painted on the walls to give the illusion that the house was grander than it actually was in some cases.

When the eruption happened in AD 79 there was no warning to the inhabitants. They had long experienced tremors and earthquakes prior to the eruption and were still repairing the town after a previous major earthquake and subsequent tremors when Vesuvius erupted. As a result the people of Pompeii were caught in the eruption and perished by heat or smoke inhalation and were subsequently buried under ash and pumice. As their bodies decayed the left holes in the ash layers and during the excavations plaster was poured into these holes to create a cast of the each person, dog, or tree etc... The result is a macabre but incredibly fascinating set of cast statues showing the final positions of inhabitants as they perished. Some where quite heartbreaking, such as the man who was still trying to reach his wife who in turn was trying in vain to shield her baby. Another was of a dog, collar round its neck and clearly curled up in pain.

There really was a huge amount to see and on another beautiful day such as the one we had we could have spent longer, but we were pretty exhausted and the endless streets of ruins seemed to start blurring so we headed back to the van. A great day out though.