The colours of the Mediterranean glow in the mid-summer sunlight – yes I was reminded today that we are past the longest day and the nights are drawing in again. It didn’t feel like that as I walked to the beach or leaped off the launch into the ocean, and the bougainvillea was full of bees and butterflies enjoying the height of summer celebration in the gorgeous plants’ vibrant petals. At first it was just the light quality at dusk. It made the colours fluoresce, red-violet against green with an intensity that quite took my breath away. The next day I saw that although not the dominant plant in the hotels gardens it was the most dramatic in the way it shone out against the competing oleanders.The colours used in the building architecture cleverly also sang against the brilliance of sunlight and the Mediterranean blue skies. My enjoyment of all this was nearly cut short when in an absent minded moment I dived off the launch wearing my spectacles. In three meters of English waters they would have been gone forever especially as the boat had powered away from the immediate vicinity in the little bay of Cala Napoletana. In the clear Mediterranean waters visibility was excellent so Antonello the boat man proved up to the challenge. Under the admiring looks of the female reporters he stripped off his shirt and dived in, returning to the surface triumphantly holding my glasses aloft, instantly becoming a hero to us all – well to me any rate, to others, it seemed, maybe an object of desire…???
We were on the boat from one Delphina Hotel to another, avoiding the narrow twisting roads (and Italian driving too of course). This luxury chain has eight four and five star hotels on Sardinia, beautifully located overlooking the coastline with its secret beaches and rocky coves, on the edge of a marine reserve that is a divers delight. Sardinia has a pink granite rock a little like Jersey’s but unlike Jersey it is washed by warm seas with very little tidal rise and fall, allowing the permanent beach provision of umbrellas, sunbathing platforms, bars etc. unthreatened most of the year by the sea itself. In Sardinia the towns build right to the sea, unlike England where they hide behind beach defences and sea walls.New legislation prevents any building close to the shore line but many hotels and towns go to the waters edge as they predate this law.
