Beautiful Sardinia

The sea is calm for the overnight ferry to Cagliari, the hut I booked turned out to be a 4 berth hut and I am sharing it with 2 Italians and a snoring man from Switserland. I am sorry for the Italians as I am known for my noisy sleeping habits too.
At 8.30 am Sunday morning I ride into town and south east following the coast. There is a lot of industry here and it is good not to have to compete with any large trucks on the road. Just before Pula I leave the industry behind and pass many crowded city beaches.
The traffic is quite heavy with people going to the beach but it gets better the further I go.
The weather is hot with a clear blue sky and the soft wind that blows is from behind, which would normally be welcome, but today I would rather have it the other way to cool down.
It just goes to show, it is hard to please everybody.
I eat along the way in a restaurant and remind myself to make sure to remember to stop in time before everything closes for siesta from 2 to 4 pm.
I follow the scenic but hilly route along the Costa del Sud and find a spacious B&B at Port di Teulada. It is on a small farm and in a converted stables. It is close to the beach and I enjoy swimming in the beautiful warm and clear water of the Mediterranean Sea.
From here I travel inland and the temperature is rising to around 40*C. I visit my Sardinian friends Susanna and her family in Carbonia and am again overwhelmed by their hospitality. We visit local sites of interest, restaurants, markets and several festivals, the lifestyle is very different and my active daytime hours shift from morning to early evening to afternoon to early morning.
We also travel to the East of Sardinia and visit a permanent exhibition of the famous artist Maria Lai, in a restored railway station in Ulassai. She died a few months ago at the age of 94.
Ulassai is in the mountains with spectacular rocky outcrops called "tacchi" or heels, the stilletto heels of upturned shoes. The cliff faces are huge and a Mecca for climbers. The area is dotted with ancient relics from the past. There is evidence of human occupation from as far back as the second and third millennium BC. Bronze coins were widely used around 300 BC. Many nuraghe which are the remains of towers or fortification from the Neolithic times.
We visit the caves of Marmuri which are spectacular. A 1 km walk down countless steps takes us through huge caves with ceilings over 50 m high. The largest staligtite is 20 m tall and if one considers that one cm ( cc ) takes 100 years to deposit it must have taken several million years for this pillar to grow.
The caves are closed in winter as an estimated 20,000 bats hibernate here from all over Sardinia.
However I have to go on and prepare to tackle the mountenous road through the centre of the island.
It is getting hotter and the forecast is for temperatures of 45*C for the next few days!
It will have to be short hops, we will see.
So long for now from hot an steamy Sardinia, some pictures to follow.