Sunday 3 June Sorrento

It is 79AD. You are a Roman, living in the quiet seaside resort town of Pompeii, on the beautiful Bay of Napoli. It is mid-morning, and you are just getting yourself ready for the day’s chores, enjoying the warm sun. Suddenly you hear a strange, low rumbling sound. You look around, wondering where that came from, but not worried. Not yet. The rumbling repeats, longer and louder this time, and this time you notice the earth tremble. Your neighbour calls out, and you reply, reassuring them that all is well, must be just an earthquake. And then your world explodes. A massive grinding roar fills the air, the earth bucks violently beneath your feet, and you jerk your gaze up to the horizon, where to your amazement you see the looming shape of Mt Vesuvius undergoing a series of convulsions, as a leaping tongue of fire reaches for the heavens on the wings of a gigantic cloud of black ash and smoke. 

It wasn’t the first eruption that killed the poor citizens of Pompeii, nor even the second. Vesuvius erupted five times that day, and it was the third that dealt death to all, a horrible death of suffocation from the poisonous sulphuric gases that settled across the surrounding flatlands.

Naples today is a teeming metropolis. One million live in Naples itself, but it is just one of the cities and towns that blend seamlessly into each other around this huge bay. Vesuvius erupts on average once every 25 years, and it last blew in 1944. I would definitely feel nervous living here, especially when you have the open air museum that is Pompeii to give you some idea of what it will be like. When they excavated Pompeii, as they chipped their way through the volcanic ash that had settled over the town and hardened into a friable rock, they kept finding spaces in the rock. With great foresight, they poured liquid plaster of paris into these spaces, and waited for it to harden before removing the surrounding rock. What they found were perfect plaster models of the people of Pompeii, whose bodies had disintegrated in the molten rock. We saw some of these today, among the magnificently preserved ruins of this town. The details are astounding: the beautiful faun statue in the atrium of a wealthy family’s house; the painted signs on the main street shops; the public toilets; the floor mosaics.  

After exploring Pompeii in the morning, we took a closer look at the culprit, scrambling right to the very top of Mt Vesuvius and peering into the crater, before enjoying the awesome view across all of the hundreds of thousands of houses and apartment blocks that are going to be wiped out next time this mountain goes. Tell you what, given our experience of the traffic around her in the last two days, I do not think much of the local government’s hoaky emergency plan to put all the people on boats and get them out to sea when Vesuvius blows. Even if they can find enough boats, can you imagine the carnage as everyone here tries to pile down to the harbour to get on a boat? Nope, don’t think I could ever feel comfortable living here. Amazing place to visit though.

Walking through the streets of Pompeii

Pompeii pedestrian crossing - note grooves worn in paving stones by cart wheels

Pompeii stadium - not quite as grand as the Colosseum, but in this one you are able to actually take the same walk into the arena that the gladiators would have 

Public toilets, Pompeii - considerably cleaner than most public toilets in Italy nowadays

Faun statue, Pompeii - this is about 30-40 cm high, and just beautiful

Plaster cast of body, Pompeii. This poor person died holding a handkershief or some such to his mouth

The Pod in Pompeii, with Vesuvius looming in the background

Our tour group - 52 Bridgnorth students and 6 accompanying adults - great to spend a few days with this team

View south, from top of Vesuvius

View toward Sorrento (at end of peninsula), with Capri off to the right

One for the geographers - looking into the crater of Vesuvius

View over the edge from our bus, driving down toward Sorrento

Traffic jam, luckily going the other way - this one must have stretched about  20 km or so, all on roads like this, and completely stationary for about half of that distance.