Page 478 - The Rough Guide of Sicily

GETTING AROUND: TRAPANI AND THE WEST

By public transport You’ll find getting around the coast a simple matter, as frequent
buses cover the short distances between all the towns and villages. Trains are useful
for the main towns (Trapani, Marsala, Mazara del Vallo and Castelvetrano) and also

for getting to Segesta. Inland, what interior bus services there are depart from Marsala
or Castelvetrano.

By car Apart from the two arms of the A29 autostrada there are only two other main
roads, the SS115 following the coast between Trapani and Castelvetrano and the
inland SS188 between Marsala and Salemi.

The Golfo di Castellammare

Backed by a forbidding wall of jagged mountains, the wide bowl of the Golfo di
Castellammare is almost entirely made up of small holiday towns. Some are
uncomfortably close to industrial plants, though these disappear as you progress west.
The main train line from Palermo (and the SS187 road) skirts the bay from Trappeto to
Castellammare del Golfo, but despite the ease of access and the consequent
development the resorts have not entirely shrugged off their original role as fishing

villages – though they have completely lost the mean look they had when fishing was
the only source of income. If you’re after a beach, Trappeto, Balestrate or Alcamo
Marina make a reasonable place to stop off, with popular summer pizzerias, fish
restaurants and hotels, but there’s no real reason to stay: in summer it’s just too busy
and in winter too funereal. In July and August you would be wise to stay on the train,

unless playing sardines on the sands is your thing. Otherwise, the train ride is as fair
an entertainment, hugging the coast at the base of massive wedges of rock, often of a
raw red colour, echoed by smaller, weathered nuggets poking out of the sea.

DANILO DOLCI: THE “SICILIAN GANDHI”

Today, the two villages of Trappeto and Balestrate, down on the coast northeast of
Alcamo and just 5km apart (and both on the train line), display a tidy sense of well-
being that’s in sharp contrast to the poverty found by social reformer Danilo Dolci
(1924–97) when he came to the region in 1952. Regarded in Sicily as something of
secular saint, Dolci was born near Trieste, and having first worked among the poor

in Tuscany, he moved to Trappeto in 1952, determined to settle in “the poorest place
I had ever known”. His Sicilian Lives records his first impressions of Trappeto:
“Coming from the North, I knew I was totally ignorant. Looking all around me, I saw
no streets, just mud and dust. Not a single chemist – or sewer. The dialect didn’t
have a word for sewer.” He campaigned tirelessly but nonviolently (including by
fasting and “reverse strikes”) to draw attention to the local conditions, and to have a