Following the nature trail on island of Capri

AFTER more than two years I’ve been on a plane again, flying to Italy for a short holiday. It’s always interesting to compare how far along the path to summer other European nations have got, compared to Britain, when you go abroad.

I flew into a sunny Naples halfway down the leg of Italy a couple of weeks ago to temperatures a good five degrees up on ours, with the sight of plenty of swallows swooping over the hotel swimming pool gathering up beakfuls of water to dampen down the dust for nest building.

The Amalfi coast – from Sorrento, south of Naples down towards Positano and Amalfi – is globally famous as a holiday destination and busy, even in April, with visitors from around the world.

With the Covid crisis seemingly nearly over travellers – particularly from the United States where many claim Italian heritage – have taken the opportunity to come back to Europe.

This lovely coastline’s honeypots, including the island of Capri, 20 minutes or so from Sorrento across the Bay of Naples, are hugely popular. Development on the coast and the island is extensive, with the spaces between the often beautiful large homes on Capri turned over to the gardens and allotments.

Climb up the steep paths out of the port and continue upwards from Capri Town, however, and you can see some interesting members of the animal kingdom.

On a narrow path between houses and productive gardens, growing vegetables, fruit and figs, we watched amazed as a long black whip-like snake slithered from the grille of a drain and pounced on a lizard basking in the sun.

Many snakes have jaws that ‘unhook’ to enable them to swallow their prey and this one performed the trick to gobble up the lizard before returning to its underground lair. The scene, which played out over a minute or two, stopped us in our tracks.

But we were on a tight schedule, visiting the gardens at Villa Lysis, at the top of the island, with a deadline to return to Marina Grande to catch the last boat back to Sorrento.

The gardens, with views down over the rest of the island and across the bay to Mount Vesuvius, which dominates virtually every vista in these parts, are stunning and the house – built by an industrialist escaping a sex scandal in Paris in 1905 – almost defies logic, clinging onto the cliffs in a dizzying expression of risk-taking architecture. We had to dash back to make the boat. As we passed the place where we had seen the snake there was no sign of the grisly drama we had witnessed.