Majestic scenes

Travel They provided the backdrop to Michael Radford's Il Postino. The history and beauty of Sicily's unspoilt Aeolian Islands are an explorer's dream.

Salina Island off Sicily's northern coast is perhaps best known as the setting for the director Michael Radford's film Il Postino .

Salina is one of seven little-known volcanic outcrops that form the Aeolian ­Islands off Sicily's northern coast. It was conquered by the Greeks and the Romans, the Moors and the Romans. With a southern coastline 100 miles from Tunisia, it has been influenced almost as much by Africa as Europe. It was the location for Il Postino, a charming, gentle film about the unlikely friendship between an almost illiterate postman and an exiled Chilean poet set in post-war Italy. I had never been to Sicily but have always been easily seduced by the landscapes I have seen in films. Much of Il Postino is set on the ­local beach, where the postman and the poet held their conversations and where the postman courted his bride with romantic poetry written by his new friend. The wash of the waves on shingle and stone, the screech of seabirds around the high cliffs, the flat empty wastes of the Tyrrhenian Sea, which was given mythical status by Homer, and the soprano whine of the wind seemed magical to me. The film, directed by the Englishman Michael Radford of White Mischief fame, conveyed an enchanted vision of a world adrift, a humid, parallel universe uncoupled from time. But was it just cinematic illusion? I had to find out. You reach Salina by first flying to Catania. Here I hired a whizzy Fiat for the 200 kilometre dash north on the autostrada, passing sandy beaches, cliffside pine forests, belltowers, belvederes and sun scorched hills (where the Mafia once hid) that sweep down to the Ionian Sea and onto Taormina, where I dallied overnight. Taormina is Sicily's most glamorous resort. It sits between Mount Etna's fuming, snow capped peak, which stills spews lava and firebombs, and the ocean. It is a majestic setting where the Greeks carved a theatre out of the hillside. The Romans turned it into an arena for gladiatorial combat. I couldn't resist wandering the subterranean corridors from which wild beasts once emerged blinking into the daylight for their fights to the death with the Spartacuses of the day. Elton John was so awed by these ruins that, at the end of a concert here, he turned his back on the audience and bowed to the crumbling pillars by way of homage. There is a curious tribute to war in Taormina, a town dedicated to hedonism. In a park given to the city by a wealthy Englishwoman forced to flee after an affair with Edward VIII, there is an original Italian Navy two-man torpedo of the kind that sank British battleships in Alexandria in 1941. It is dedicated to a local frogman who drowned trying to blow up a British aircraft carrier in Gibraltar. But I was impatient for Salina. It was a 90 minute drive to Milazo port, where voyagers for the Aeolian Islands may while away a pleasant hour on the dockside eating just-caught swordfish before the 50-minute passage by hydrofoil. The winds rule everything in the Aeolian Islands. In fact, they are named after Aeolus, the god of winds. It was on the island of Stromboli that Aeolus gave Odysseus the ill winds of the sea in a bag and told him he would have a safe journey home to Ithaca as long as he didn't open the bag. His sailors, overcome with curiosity could not resist the temptation. The winds escaped and blew them all the way back to the Aeolian Islands. I mentioned this to one of the boatman on the island of Lipari, my land fall in the Aeolians, as we debated whether the winds would drop long enough for him to take me to Stromboli. He puffed his cheeks and muttered "tempus brutus". Ugly weather. This was Allesandra Bartalo. Or as he is better known on the island Patinas, or Small Potatoes. He said the boats wouldn't sail today. So there was nothing for it but to spend a pleasing day looking around Lipari's fortified acropolis and its excellent museum of Greek and Roman treasures fished up in the nets of trawlers. The water didn't look much rougher than a windy day on a park lake to me and I asked Manuela D'Ambra, the manager of the Villa Meligunis where I was staying in the old fisherman's quarter of Marina Corta, why such fine sailors wouldn't put to sea. "Most people in the islands are frightened of the sea," she said. "They have all had friends and relatives carried off by the sea. Those inland never go near the sea. Even the fishermen catch just enough for local needs. They are all superstitious." Next day, the waters were indigo and flat as glass again. At last we were headed for Salina and the beach from Il Postino, which I had discovered was called Pollara. I took the main road out of the port, Santa Marina, passed through the timeless village of Mara, where I stayed at the bijou Signum hotel, drove five kilometres along a winding coast road through countryside thick with olive and citrus groves, and wondered at the vast emptiness of the sea far below. It wasn't easy to scramble down to the beach. A long winding path, overgrown with myrtle and strewn with boulders, took me to a wire fence that warned it was dangerous to proceed because of a crumbling coastline. I pulled the wire back, ploughed on and, after jumping four feet off a rocky lip, finally touched down on Pollara. It was eerily silent. Not a soul to be seen. But that evocative wash of the water was just as it was in the film. The beach seemed smaller, though. Ten years of erosion has halved its size. But it was still magical - the gulls, the light, the wind, the sense that this was what Pollara felt like in the days of Odysseus. On either side, high cliffs stretched out like crab claws. Carved into them were caves where, in the old days, fishermen moored their boats. Later that night at the Signum, I discovered I was not alone in my infatuation with Pollara. Shortly after he left Downing Street, Tony Blair flew here, taking the helicopter from Catania to join Queen Rania of Jordan on her yacht. Prince William also sailed these waters last year. Dolce and Gabbana, the Milan fashion designers, own one of the white cube houses here and every summer, to the irritation of the locals, entertain their celebrity friends. Naomi Campbell once upset everyone by playing loud disco music on the roof until dawn. Panarea is chic and expensive, an Italian St Tropez, its harbour filled in the summer with elegant yachts and the well-tanned wealthy. It is an incredible contrast to the other Aeolian islands. Distant Alicuda has no roads; donkeys are used to transport everything. On Vulcano, the big attraction is the sulphurous ponds with their therapeutic mud. There is a sense that these islands are very much like the Greek islands of 40 years ago: mainly unspoilt but bound one day to attract bigger crowds. Now is the time to visit. The hotels in the Aeolians are intimate, family run and provide a homely base for exploration. The Signum is a hidden oasis of small pastel houses tucked away down meandering alleys. They are impeccably furnished with individual antiques by the owner Clara Rametta. Another delight is the Sicilian cooking by Clara's husband. Carrier arranged my trip through one of their divisions, Hush, which provides tailor made holidays in ­Italy with stays at informal, boutique hotels which accommodate less than 50 guests, all friendly and ideally situated.