The second largest island in the Mediterranean sea, a name familiar to many but relatively unknown as a holiday destination. The little you hear about Sardinia is all true, over 1,800 km of coastline, much of it utterly unspoilt and fringed by white sand beaches lapped by crystal clear waters of every shade from deep aquamarine to shimmering turquoise and emerald green.

Probably its' only claim to fame apart from giving its' name to tins of small fish, is the Costa Smeralda, built by the Aga Khan as a playground for the rich and without doubt, pristinely beautiful, but perhaps slightly too perfect and a touch synthetic and out of context with the real Sardinia beyond its' confines.

Matching the beauty of its' coastline, the hinterland of Sardinia is a magnificent and uncompromising landscape of high rugged mountains, deep gorges and ravines and rolling wooded countryside, with small forests of pine and holm-oak interspersed by olive and almond groves, vineyards and citrus plantations and great swathes of green and yellow Macchia, the dense and aromatic Mediterranean scrub-land, still in some places inhabited by wild boar, a Sardinian delicacy and quite commonly featured on the menus of restaurants throughout the island.

Between the villages and towns, the interior of the island is now sparsely inhabited, but you will find many a pre-historic memento of the mysterious and enigmatic Nuraghic people, a race of warrior shepherd kings and builders of the 'Nuraghi', incredible, monumental, conic-shaped, stone structures, believed to have been used as fortified dwellings. There are still seven thousand of these amazing antiquities scattered around the island today and only a mere 30 have so far been seriously documented by archaeologists.

Like other strategically placed islands in the Mediterranean rich in natural resources, Sardinia has been invaded, conquered and swapped by all the great powers of history. Phoenicians, Romans and Carthaginians have battled for supremacy with Pisans, Arabs, Vandals, Barbary Pirates and finally the Spanish.

 Many of these different cultures have left their imprint on the island and there are a number of impressive Roman and Carthaginian ruins in coastal areas as well as beautiful monasteries, churches and many fine old buildings in the capital of Calighari and other major towns. However in historical terms, it is the ancient Nuraghic people who have left the most indelible mark on the island and who have rightly been credited as being the precursors of the present Sardinian culture where even today, there are some thirty thousand shepherds and three million sheep!