# Sardinia Trip



## jonegood (Nov 5, 2007)

We ve just returned from a fantastic trip which included 3 ½ weeks in Sardinia. We did a clockwise trip starting and ending in Olbia. And really enjoyed it. We know that there isn’t much info here so have written up these notes to try and help any future visitors. We would like to thank Peejay, as we found his 2007 blog very useful, but as it’s a few years old now a few things have obviously changed. So:-

What we saw.
Scenery, lots and lots and lots of it! It has so many beautiful beaches of white sand and warm clear water just waiting for you. But it also has high mountain passes and is quite green; imagine Kephalonia meets the Alps and you re not too far away.

What to take
1, An Acsi Card. We prefer wildcamping/aires but on a trip like this we sometimes take a couple of days to get the washing done etc.The Sardinian sostas were usually in better places than the campsites but were generally of poor quality with terrible facilities.

2, Gas. LPG is widely available but most of the garages are attendant service and they are apparently not keen on refilling bottles. We bought an Italian pigtail and swapped bottles on the mainland (30 euros/10kg +10 euros deposit)

3, Scooter. You can get on a lot of the beach car parks in the MH, but we found the scooter very useful for exploring. We had cycles but Sardinian roads the standard of driving and the heat didn’t encourage us.

4, Books. We only saw 1 other UK MH in 3 ½ weeks, and we didn’t get to meet them. We didn’t see anywhere selling english books

5, Sosta list. We recommend you either print out the page or get a download of Camping car infos, this consistently delivered up to date information.
Guida camper was useless. This book is widely touted so we bought it and took it but it disappointed too many times. Its now so old that some of the Sostas are closed and many are not included.

6, A good Italian dictionary/phrase book. Many sardinians spoke no other language. Unreasonable I know.

When to go
We sailed on June 1st and stayed until 26th. Next time we would probably plan to arrive on Sardinia mid- may, and leave no later than 20th June, as after this time the number of italian families increased considerably, lovely people but they to tend to throng and keep different hours to us. Alternatively we would go for September.

How we got there

We booked on the internet a few days before we wanted to go. There was plenty of choice of both overnight and daytime crossings. 

We sailed from Civitavecchia to Olbia with Moby at 8am, we slightly understated the van length at 7m and paid 150 euros for a daytime crossing. Having checked out the alternatives we stayed the night before on the town carpark next to the police station and about 200m from the port. 

Both ferries were single deck load through the back and either drive round in a U or reverse on. The sea was smooth but both boats were noiser and vibrated more than a conventional ferry. Both ferries seemed to be travelling much faster than we expected. Apart from the usual inside restaurants. They had outside pools with surrounding deck chairs etc. some MH ers bought their own chairs up with them.

We sailed back from Golfo Aranci to Livorno with Corsica Sardinia Ferries, we took the 8am Tuesday sailing because it was only 100 euros. again very similar experience, Good but we wouldn’t fancy trying to sleep on one. We stayed the night before in the town car park by the railway line. Nice and quiet and you can actually see the dock from it.

If you re 7 metres or less you can take advantage of Mobys ‘jackpot’ fares, were only a bit over so did it anyway, it pretty much halved the price. Nobody showed any inclination to check it.

Climate
Our origin plan was to go onto the top of Corsica then Sardinia and then come back up Italy. however the Corsican weather in May was showery and not conducive to beach holidays. Interestingly the Sardinian weather was much better than Corsica. 

We saw no rain on Sardinia, At the start of our visit it was around 30C and by the end it was around 36-38C. There was normally a very pleasant warm breeze blowing. The Sea was warm enough to go pretty much straight in. 

Travelling around
Diesel prices during our visit were about 1.60-1.70 euros per litre and there were lots of filling stations, many with LPG.

It was bigger than we thought. Its 160 miles from Olbia to Cagliari, there is a pretty good trunk road linking them, mostly dual carriageway and not too much traffic. 

However we wanted to see the sights so we needed to use the coastal and more minor roads. These vary immensely, many of them are very dramatic, snaking along cliffsides or through surprisingly high mountain passes. While in the middle of the island there are some flat plains with roads that are dead straight.

Where to stay
We were able to wildcamp many times, usually on beach car parks, even where the signs said you couldn’t people were stopping and the police didn’t seem to care. We think this would probably be different in July and August but you would still find places.

The Sostas were generally of the managed type and cost 15-20 euros/night. On the whole they were in good locations but pretty tired, with broken or knackered facilities. 

The ACSI campsites were all in the 16 euros band, they were generally better vfm than the Sostas because they had much better facilities for about the same money but the locations suffered and they seemed to be particularly bad at collecting as much of your documentation as possible.


Phones/Internet
Amazingly, given the terrain, the phones worked just about everwhere, even on the ferry!!!

Some towns had community Wifi but generally it was patchy. and campsite wifi could be expensive. Bars in Alghero had it but we didn’t sepend much of our time in them.

We had a 3g Kindle and were able to check our emails with that most places.

Crime
We never felt threatened, in fact we felt welcomed everywhere we went.
People seemed fairly lax about theft, shops closed for lunch and left stock items outside, plenty of unlocked bicycles etc, didn’t see any dealing going on. The only thing we saw were some of the roadsigns had been shotup (long winters I guess!!)

Shopping
Pretty similar to the mainland. Yes there are Lidls! As well as the Italian Coop, Conad etc There are also several Auchan, LeClerc. When we went there quite a few garden stalls on the roadsides.

The prices are pretty similar to Italy.

Pasturised milk was widely available but ordinary tea was a bit more difficult.

What would we do differently next time

Arrive a couple of weeks earlier
Take a better guide book
Learn a bit more Italian
Take a better Camera.

These are my notes as we saw it, if you want some more specific info feel free to pm and I ll do my best.
Jon

ps. I am working on some notes for where we stayed and what we saw, maybe put them on in a few days.


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## eddied (May 9, 2005)

*Sardinia*

 Grazie, good post; if a little patronising in tone.
saluti,
eddied


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## jonegood (Nov 5, 2007)

Thanks for feedback Eddie

A career as a travel writer is out then? LOL!!

Sardinia really is a great place to go by MH but it seems not many brits get there, so there isnt much uptodate info available about Sardinia by MH.

So I thought back to my planning and tried to answer as many of the practical questions as possible.

ciao
Jon


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## hmh (Jun 25, 2008)

We went to Sardinia in May 2009. Lovely place, doesn't sound to have changed much. The wild flowers especially were spectacular.

We had free Internet at the libraries on the East coast I seem to remember.

Moby are the only ferry co. to have checked our length and fined us a token 5 Euros, a sort of slap on the wrist, as we are 6m but 6.5 with bikes on the back and we only declared 6.

Helen


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