Up close and personal with a wild boar

Back in the summer I was driving the road from Isola Rossa to Aggius. It was about nine at night and my family were in the car having just enjoyed a lovely meal in a local pizzeria, when suddenly I heard a shout from the back seat and realised we were about to get up close and personal with a wild boar.
Amazingly I managed to swerve in time and the animal wandered off to die another day.
When I mentioned this to my friend Andrea in the bar half an hour later he told me that there are rules to abide by when you run over these creatures.
Apparently our porcine friends are a protected species there and if one is injured in a collision it is the driver's responsibility to make sure the swine is killed.
This has less to do with their 'protected' status and more to do with the fact that when a wild boar hits a car it causes a massive amount of damage, and in order to make a claim on the insurance you have to have prove that said damage was inflicted by a wild boar.
The only indisputable proof in the eyes of the law it seems is a corpse.

Stunning nighttime shot of Italy

Check out this stunning nighttime shot of Italy captured by an astronaut from the International Space Station. Sardinia is visible in the bottom left of the photograph. Click to see a larger version

Sardinia sojourn for Martin Johnson

I see former England rugby coach Martin Johnson has taken a lower profile role compared to his previous job. The World Cup-winning captain will head off to the Forte Village Resort in the south of Sardinia to coach the next generation of stars in the oval ball game in July of this year.
Should be a doddle compared to managing the drunken, dwarf tossing chaos that became synonymous with England's appearance at last year's Rugby World Cup

Newport Taekwon-do team clean up at martial arts championship

Well I'm currently laid up with pneumonia which gives me plenty of time to sit down with the papers.
Congratulations to Gassor's Tournament Team who are based at the Martial Arts and Fitness Centre in Newport. They jetted off to Sardinia to compete in the Mediterranean Open Championships in Sardinia and came back with a massive haul of 30 medals
Read more about here

Sardinia shhhhivvvers under a blanket of snow

Our beloved Aggius found itself in the middle of an Arctic blast last week - much like the Wales did in 2010.
We're hoping the pipes in our house haven't burst, but unbelievably the village looks even more beautiful in the winter than it does when the sun's out.

Summer listening, sorted

Though this has nothing to do with either Italy or Sardinia - other than it'll be my summer record while I'm driving around this year - the new Van Halen album is the toppermost of the poppermost, as they probably used to say on Radio 1 back in the 70s and 80s.
Buy it or stay a loser.

Counting the cost of a holiday rental car

A brief warning for those planning on renting a car in the coming months while on holiday.
A couple of years ago we booked a vehicle with a reputable company we always use for three weeks in the summer.
As we only take cabin bags we scooted past the holidaymakers hauling their suitcases off the carousel and figured we'd be sat in our local bar before last orders.
When we reached the car hire desk however we were informed that, unlike the previous five occasions that we'd used them, we would need to have a credit card in the name of the main driver in order to secure the vehicle for the duration of the rental.
Of course neither of us had both our credit cards (with PIN) AND driver's licence and were refused the car that we had already paid for. And though the company reimbursed the few hundred pounds we'd paid immediately, we found ourselves forking out almost £1,500 for a replacement car.
We were lucky. It was one of the rare occasions we actually had some cash in the bank. However while we were in Sardinia last year I saw the very same thing happen to half-a-dozen other travellers.
So remember. Whether you're in Italy, Spain or any part of the globe take your licence, the credit card you used to book the car, the PIN number and if you're not the main driver get him or her to take all of the above too. Or it really could cost you dear.

Sardinia takes the lead in biomass research

Sardinians aren't exactly the tree hugger types. During our first few years there we were the butt of jokes from friends each time we asked where we could recycle our glass bottles.
Conversely islanders seemed to embrace the idea of wind farms while in the UK we were too busy whining about the noise/view/effect on house prices - all cobblers by the way, trust me there's one near us. So it's encouraging to see that they're also leading the charge when it comes to using organic waste to produce clean energy.
Britain's NIMBYs have been warned.

So I was thinking this afternoon...

that having lost my job and neglected my once much-loved blog that maybe it was time I started a new one up. Imagine my surprise to find that those lovely people at Blogger hadn't shut down the original.
Yay! 'm back