This relatively little-known, almost perfectly circular rail loop has been traversing Mount Etna since the late 19th century, but it’s no tourist train.
If Sicily’s premier peak could somehow be anthropomorphised she would surely have long ago been diagnosed with acute behavioural issues.
But there’s much more to this World Heritage-listed peak and other, arguably more rewarding, ways to view and experience it which I’m about to discover on a free day on my “Italy, the Deep South & Sicily” Albatross tour itinerary.Further down the mountain’s epic slopes exist extraordinary communities which encircle Etna a little like those massive smoke rings, and which are serviced by a rather heroic, if not wholly eccentric, narrow gauge train.
The route passes through salubrious orchards and vineyards, caramel-coloured goats cavorting around ancient stone walls and fences, between pistachio nut and prickly pear groves and across stark and lumpy lava fields that sprout pockets of Technicolour wildflowers. Attached to the bar, close to the flow of coffee and grappa, is an annexe, a kind of Sicilian men’s shed, where the town’s local elderly men gather to socialise.
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