Aeolian joys

It’s 5 a.m., a splashy grey dawn, and we’re out of here on easyJet. Palermo is another world of heat and brightness but we’re not stopping; at the port we board a catamaran which churns its way towards the Aeolian islands, the volcanic archipelago off the north-east corner of Sicily.

The islands are named after Aeolus, son of Zeus and god of the four winds, but there was scarcely a whisper of a breeze in the two weeks we were there. We had all sorts of plans, to island-hop, go to the hot mud baths on Vulcano, visit the black sand beaches of Stromboli and climb its volcano by night, perhaps a day on Panarea, Italy’s Ibiza, where glamorous people prowl in bars. A night or so on the rocky outcrops of Alicudi and Filicudi, not forgetting Lipari, the main island, and then since we were going back via Sicily we might as well stop there.