Thank you to everyone who has donated to my A4D campaign. £360 is what it takes for A4D to keep a child with T1D alive for a year, so I’m really pleased to have raised almost £3600 – please help me hit £5k here.

The sky was incredible last night. I woke up to a mangy dog prowling around the beach where I was sleeping, and the sight of the huge moon rising over cliffs had me feeling like I’d woken up on a different planet.

You’d think that after my spillage on the bus to the ferry I’d have invested in a military grade olive oil storage solution. But when I opened my front hatch this morning I was met with an empty bottle and a load of kit marinating in oil. Bugger! Luckily my clothes were above the high-oil mark, but my backpack and tent are now saturated and I smell like a Mediterranean chip shop.

It was 9am by the time I’d cleaned up, and it was already hot and head windy. I paddled for a couple of hours, feeling a bit flat, and stopped in a town that could’ve been any town on this coast.

I went and sat in a beach club, buying my right for a seat with the purchase of the only thing on offer, a mysterious small brown lump – was it meat, fish, fruit, vegetable, bread? I’m still not sure. I felt quite muddled, and despite the massive speakers blasting the standard Europop playlist, I managed to do some thinking and write down my half chewed thoughts (yesterday’s blog). These words are coming from my brain, so I’m aware that while they make perfect sense to me, maybe the reader perceives them differently, or doesn’t get my point at all.

The deep fat fryer got fired up and a bunch of chubby kids appeared, to chow down what looked like battered sandwiches. It’s really stark how many people are unhealthily overweight in this poorer part of Italy compared to further North. It’s such a sad paradox. I had an arancini and the chef gave me a small plate of pasta carbonara, which together made my blood sugars shoot up.

The wind had spun around now, and I set off across a 35km wide bay, cutting off 20kms of paddling. I felt much lighter having written down and vented how I’d been feeling. It was a beautiful evening and I quickly forgot what I’d been thinking earlier. Don’t listen to your doubts, I told myself, because it’s worth it for moments like this, and that suffering is already a fond memory.

A trail of smoke drifted from Stromboli, one of the seven Aeolian Islands that were formed by the African tectonic plate pushing under the Eurasian plate. Stromboli is one of the four volcanos in Italy to have erupted in the last 100 years (the other 3 are Etna, Vesuvius and Vulcano), and is one of the world’s most active volcanoes.

I couldn’t help but imagine what I’d do if I saw a tsunami on the horizon, but looking it up, the last serious tsunami in Italy was in 1908 when the water ran up 13 metres above sea level on land after the Messina quake, which killed 200,000 people. I forgot how seismically active Italy is – since 1950 nearly 7000 people have died from earthquakes.

The sky flamed orange as the sun set, and sea burst in to life. Shearwaters swooped over the waves, heading straight for me but dodging at the last second, and shoals of flying fish launched from the water, a joy to watch as they glided over the surface before disappearing back in to another world. The finale was still to come – dolphins all around me, some within touching distance. An encounter like this makes me feel like time has stopped, like nothing exists but that moment.

The amount of plastic floating in the sea here is quite shocking, and it’s been the same along the whole Italian coast. After paddling with dolphins, it hits you how sad it is. Often it’s children’s toys from the beach – I’ve come across 3 Lilo’s floating at sea, plus buckets and spades. Balloons are common, plus plastic bottles and food packaging. It’s got to the point where it feels pointless for me to pick stuff up – there’s just too much – but I do what I can, because like I said with the charity – if everyone believed everyone else was doing something, this faith would make something happen.

I paddled past a rock with hundreds of seagulls standing on it, and made land over some slippery rocks, just as the light was fading.

Diabetes

My levels have been pretty awful the last few days. Well, not too volatile, just a bit high. I’ve been lacking the will power to do anything about it, but today I’ve woken up with renewed motivation and will do a low carb reset. To anyone struggling put there – preserve – things will improve!