Salerno to Paestum

Sunday 7th February,
Salerno to Paestum
There was an air of excitement about today, it had thundered and lightninged in the night but was bright and warm this morning which was good. The real reason for the lifted spirits was that we were going to Paestum and will see our first Greek temples and remains. We have seen Norman, Saracen, Roman, Turkish, Moorish since our trip began but this will be the first Greek. The ride to Paestum was not prepossessing running through some fairly down at heel suburbs with some fairly dubious characters hanging around making sticking to the cycle lane impossible because they don’t seem to want to get out of the way. We did see our first ‘catch’ on the basis that we’ve watched men fishing off jetties, quays, harbour walls and boats, in rivers, canals and lakes, from beaches and sand spits and never seen a rod bent yet. But today at the roadside we saw a red VW Golf obviously in negotiation with a white plastic chair (or for those not following regularly, the occupant of the plastic chair). This seemed to take less than half a minute and suddenly the white plastic chair elegantly stepped into the Red VW-G and away they sped – now that’s a first!!
The hotel we’d selected was extremely comfortable and once again we were the only people in there so it’s kind of them to stay open. After unloading out kit we set off in search of the Greek temples with the Doric columns (uncle Paul take note!!) and were not disappointed. Paestum was the ancient town of Poseidonia, 600BC founded by the Greeks and apparently built by Jason and his Argonauts and is still in remarkably good condition. The city remained under Greek control until the Romans took it over in 273BC and changed it’s name to Paestum. Sometime in the early first millennium the city was abandoned to avoid the Saracens and also malaria only to be rediscovered when it became fashionable to visit ruins in the first half of the 1700’s. We just loved it, after The Coliseum and The Forum in Rome and Pompeii we are getting better at telling an ‘atrium’ from a ‘vestibulum’. The city had been laid out like New York – all straight lines with designated areas for meetings, shopping, business and fun (the amphitheatre – not that dissimilar to a Spanish bull ring) and three temples which if you put the roofs back on them would look as good as they did 2,600 years ago.


View from Hera's temple to Neptune's temple

Neptune's temple.

Afterwards we circumnavigated the very impressive massive stone block walls and cycled back to the hotel in the bitterly cold wind which was coming straight off the snow covered mountains to the east of us.

The walls of Paestum.