Page 247 - The Rough Guide of Sicily

if they’re just a few minutes’ walk from each other – at least if you’re fit. Most of the

tracks are pretty steep, following and cutting up and down between the ancient
terraces carved into slopes of maquis and prickly pear.

Climb away from the port, up the flight of steps opposite the jetty, and you’re in
another world. The well-kept paths are lined with volcanic boulders interspersed
with great flowering cacti, whose pustular blooms erupt upon elephant-ear leaves.
You can clamber down to pebble beaches and swim in deserted coves and at the

archipelago’s loveliest lido; make your way around the terraced headlands to
phenomenal viewpoints, or hire a little wooden boat (a gozzetto) for the day and
snorkel around splintered offshore rocks and hidden sea caves.

Filicudi’s sheer slopes are all painstakingly lined with stone terracing, a reminder
that before mass emigration in the 1950s and 1960s there was a great deal of

agricultural activity here. Many terraces were subsequently abandoned, and
cultivation is now down to a few vines and olives, but they do serve to reduce soil
erosion. Today, there are only 250 or so permanent island residents, and while this
number swells perhaps tenfold in August with visitors, a coterie of left-wing villa
owners (including former Rome mayor Francesco Rutelli), and returned emigranti,

Filicudi is still a long way from being overdeveloped.

FILICUDI’S ABANDONED VILLAGE

There are plenty of good walks along the ancient mule tracks of Filicudi: one of the
nicest is out to the abandoned village of Zucco Grande. From the port, walk up to
La Canna hotel, following the well-kept stone mule track that begins from a point
almost opposite the hydrofoil and ferry dock, then continue until you meet the
tarmacked road. The path continues on the other side of the road, heading towards
the settlement of Valdichiesa. After about 20min, the path forks, and you’ll see the

first of several signs to Zucco Grande. The path is well marked, following the