Our next destination was a marine reserve on the south east corner of Sardinia which had been recommended.  We had 4 hours leisurely motor-sailing from a late start (1 p.m.) after admiring the amazing prehistoric bronze statuettes in the Sardinian archaeological museum – fascinating and well worth the time taken to walk to the top of Cagliari again.  We eventually departed after refuelling & recalibrating our distance log, which was over-reading significantly – so our mammoth 270 mile passage to Tunisia was quite a bit shorter in reality!

We anchored off a beach in a very tranquil setting, looking forward to exploring the nature reserve on Cap Carbonara.  Unfortunately D was bothered by a tummy bug, which slowed us down somewhat when we set out the following day.  (Lindsay may have tried - & failed! - to finish him off with some heated up leftover rice!)   However we had a good morning walk into the town of Villasimius and, in the late afternoon, a great march around the coast ending up back in town for our first Italian pizza and a very enjoyable Sardinian red wine.  The walk took us past some great coastal scenery and a lagoon full of flamingos (sorry no photo – too dark!).  The whole countryside was covered in mimosas and brooms and sprinkled with delicate lilac thistles amongst other wildflowers.  The scents were wonderful.

PS apologies for the delay in posting this batch of entries: we’ve taken to sending them after we’ve visited a place and when we got to Tunisia we couldn’t find any form of internet that worked.