It was nearly dusk. A couple of hundred yards further on the path rounded a bend through the trees and ended suddenly, breathtakingly, in a viewing platform hanging out over a rock face – like a little patio in the sky. It was a look-out built for the public but I had the feeling that no one had been there for years, certainly no tourist.
I have never seen anything half as beautiful: on one side the town of Capri spilling down the hillside, on the other the twinkling lights of the cove at Anacapri and the houses gathered around it, and in front of me a sheer drop of – what -200 feet, 300 feet, to a sea of the deepest aquamarine washing against the aged rocks. The sea was so far below that the sound of breaking waves reached me as the faintest of whispers. A sliver of moon, brilliantly white, hung in a pale blue evening sky, a warm breeze pulled gently at my hair and everywhere there was the scent of lemon, honeysuckle and pine. It was like being in the household products section of Sainsbury’s. Ahead of me there was nothing but open sea, calm and seductive, for 150 miles to Sicily.