Wednesday 8th April, 2020. My last holiday, in Cyprus at Christmas, was ostensibly wildlife, but in fact had bits of archaeology thrown in. This one, which took place from 7th to 14th April, was explicitly the two. The company running it was ACE Cultural Tours.

I have now been back just nine days, but it feels like a lifetime. An awful lot has happened since then, including my having solar panels installed, and mynot being able to shed a very thick cold that started while I was still away. In that time, our tour director, Peter Exley’s, account has arrived to help my memory, along with useful notes of photos I took at the time.

Here’s a map of Sardinia copied from my atlas. Mid Tuesday evening we had landed at Olbia Airport, in the north east, and had travelled for two hours cross-country to Cabras, in the centre west.

After a night’s sleep and a good breakfast, today, as most days, we started with a stop at a supermarket to buy such provisions as each wanted for lunch. The morning was spent around the Torre Grande lagoons near Cabras.

For a long while, I was puzzled – and very disappointed – that many of my photos seemed fuzzy. Then to my great relief I discovered that somehow I had left it on manual focus…

There was some excitement about these tiny plants of the iris family, Gynandriris sisyrinchium, known as Barbary nut, and some regret that it was not further advanced.

Some of the various types of vegetation around.

And a closer view of some poppies

I had first discovered and loved scarlet pimpernels in the garden of a flat I lived in in Reading half a century ago. But this was the first time I had seen the blue version, and it was a bonus that the two appear together.

Back in our coach (there were 15 of us plus two guides) we moved on to the nearby Sinis peninsula, firstly to a cafe happy for us to eat our food there as long as we bought a drink. Right by this cafe was the church of San Giovanni di Sinis, undergoing renovation, though rusty scaffolding indicated it hadn’t been worked on for many a year. We learned from Elisabetta, our local guide, that it had been build built in the form of a Greek cross in the 7th century, and extended in the 11th with a nave to resemble a Romanesque church.

Someone spotted a Northern wheatear on a roof by the cafe.

It was a short walk to the nearby beach. On the way we saw, among other things, Hare’s tail grass,

this, possibly sea lavender, but I’m not sure,

and an agave,

with a collared dove perched near the top.

Having looked at some old seagrass rolled by the weather into small balls, we walked along a quiet coastal roadway, and noted beside it an example of the only Sardinian native palm, a chaemoerops humilis, European fan palm.

We arrived at Tharros, and wandered among ancient Punic and Roman ruins. The Phoenicians are believed to have first colonised the site in the 8th century BCE. (The defensive tower at the top of this picture is much more modern, being built by the Spanish in the 15th/16th centuries.)

Shortly after we started our tour, guided by Elisabetta, we came across two young women modelling Sardinian costume, (which was to resonate on our very last day). I understood that they were in fact students of fashion, being photographed professionally.

There were information panels everywhere, in five languages,

including Sardinian, a Romance language in its own right, and definitely not a dialect of Italian.

Eyes, especially those of Peter, Tour Director, were open to wildlife of course.

Regret in the morning that the tiny iris, the Barbary nut, was not in flower, was assuaged in this sunny site.

About a kilometre away could be seen another of the Spanish defensive towers.

The majority of the party walked on to it, but I was among the smaller group which decided to turn back and wait for the others at the cafe, where I had a very soothing, if increasingly sickly, crema freddo caffe.

Thus ended our first day’s wildlife and archeological discoveries.