Parco Naturale dei Nebrodi is a great forest of oak and beech that rides a long ridge of rolling hills inland from the north coast of Sicily. We reach it on the tiny back road from San Marco d’Alunzio, missing Frazzano and running past the Monastero San Filippo Fragalá that is occasionally open to visitors. Then around the winding hillside to the pretty village of Longi and on up into hills past herds of sheep and goats eventually to a beautiful large, restored house named Mangalaviti on the edge of the forest; here the tarmac turns to track.

The first half of the bumpy forest track is achievable by car; we walk the second half on a winding and well rutted route down through dense beechwoods with a bright understorey of wild garlic. The beech gives way to broken oakwoods and huge blossoming pear trees and other small trees in a natural wood pasture reminiscent of parts of the New Forest.

The grasslands are dominated by early flowering daisies but also swathes of cyclamen and green-winged orchids. In some places, branched asphodels Asphodelus ramosus crowd the floor. The butterflies are limited to clouds of small whites and a few small heaths. A small herd of Sicilian black pigs or Nero dei Nebrodi forage on a patch of open grassland.

At this point just above lake Biviere, the unmistakable shape of Mount Etna appears to the east through the long valley; it is a beautiful but slightly unnerving dark grey cone. The view of the north coast is equally impressive as the ground falls away dramatically from this high, inland plateau. Around the lake there is an abundant and beautiful small blue lupin Lupinus cosentinii in the tussocky grassland. The lake itself is quiet with coot, pochard and a solitary gull on the water and small herons in the fringing reeds.