A family & friends gathering · Sicily · Autumn 2026
Not too long back I made a land purchase in Sicily, many of you have not seen it — 2.5 hectares of terraced olives on the coast between Santo Stefano di Camastra and Cefalù, with the sea in front of it. Come for a week or two. We'll pick some olives, and then I'm taking everyone around the island.
The invitation
This isn't a work trip. The olives are the excuse — the point is having everyone in one place, on the land, eating long lunches and seeing the island properly. Pick as much or as little as you like. There's no experience needed and nobody's counting crates.
The terraces, the old stone, the view down to the water. I'll walk you the whole thing and tell you what I'm planning.
Nets down, combs out, a few hours while the fruit is cool. The kids are good at this. Sit it out if you'd rather.
Our fruit goes to the village frantoio the same day. You watch it go in as olives and come out as oil, still cloudy and green.
Lunch out under the trees from whatever we bought that morning, dinner down in Santo Stefano at the same few tables every night.
Afternoons and a few full days are for the island. I'm renting a van and driving — see the next section.
Around the island
We're centrally placed on the north coast, so most of the island is a day trip. Volcano, ruins, markets, cheese rooms and pottery yards — a fair bit of it is eating and drinking, and I make no apology for that. Nothing here is compulsory. Tell me what you want to see and I'll build the week around it; some days we go out as one group, some days people split off.
01 · The volcano
Up the south side to the craters, black lava fields the whole way. Snow on top by November while it's still warm at the bottom. Cable car and a 4x4 track for anyone who wants to go higher.
Full day · 2 h 30 each way
02 · The wine
A day or two among the vineyards on the slopes of the volcano, visiting a few cellars and tasting as we go. We'll wander the wine towns that ring Etna — Randazzo, Linguaglossa, Castiglione di Sicilia, Passopisciaro, Milo, Bronte, Zafferana Etnea — stopping for long lunches wherever it looks right.
Half or full day · Cellars booked ahead
03 · The old town
Twenty minutes west of us and worth several visits. A medieval fishing town wedged between a huge crag and the water, with a Norman cathedral begun in 1131 by Roger II — inside, a Christ Pantocrator in Byzantine gold mosaic that has been staring down from that apse since 1148. Lanes barely wide enough for two people, a stone wash-house fed by a spring that runs down under the street, a long crescent of beach, and the fishing harbour where the boats still come in. Anyone who wants a climb can go up La Rocca for the whole coast at once.
Half or full day · 20 min away
04 · The mountain town
Up into the mountains behind us to Castelbuono, gathered around a squat 14th-century Ventimiglia castle. This is one of only two places on earth where manna is still harvested — growers score the bark of the manna ash and the sap bleeds out and hardens in the sun into white sticks they call cannoli. It was the world's laxative until synthetics killed the trade in the fifties; today it sweetens the panettone the town has become famous for.
Half day · 50 min away
05 · The food
The mountains east of us are cured-meat country. Black Nebrodi pigs run half-wild in the oak woods there, and the salame from Sant'Angelo di Brolo has been made the same way long enough to earn its own protected name. We'll do a proper eating day — a salumeria and a cheese producer, and lunch built out of what we're handed.
On the cheese side: caciocavallo and provola hung in pairs from beams to age, ricotta still warm from the morning, aged pecorino studded with peppercorns, and the sheep's-milk cheeses from the Madonie farms. You taste standing up, in the room where it's made, and buy what you can carry.
Full day · Producers arranged ahead
06 · The pottery
Our base town, and one of the three great ceramic towns of Sicily. A landslide destroyed the original settlement in 1682 and the Duke of Camastra had it rebuilt on a grid on higher ground — the clay under it turned out to be superb, and the town has made pottery ever since.
Today the road in is lined with workshops and yards stacked with majolica: hand-painted tiles, olive jars, plates in yellow, cobalt and green, the grinning Moor's-head planters you see all over the island. You can stand at the wheel with a potter, watch the painting done freehand, and have anything you buy crated and shipped home. There's a small ceramics museum in the old Palazzo Trabia too.
Half day · Ten minutes from the grove
07 · The ruins
Taormina is the one I won't let anyone skip. Its Teatro Antico was cut into the hillside by the Greeks in the third century BC and rebuilt by the Romans, and it's the second largest ancient theatre in Sicily. What makes it is what sits behind the stage: the ruined arches frame the bay on one side and Etna smoking on the other. Two thousand three hundred years old and they still put concerts on in it every summer.
If there's appetite for more: the lone Doric temple at Segesta standing in an empty valley, the fallen columns at Selinunte above the sea, and Tindari on its headland an hour from us.
Full days · Pick one or two
08 · The city
A night or two in the capital. The street markets at Ballarò and the Vucciria, the Palatine Chapel with its Norman, Arab and Byzantine work all in one room, the archaeological museum, and the best street food in Italy eaten standing on a corner.
Full day or overnight · 1 h 15 away
09 · The slow days
Some of the best days will be the ones with nothing on them — an afternoon up at the grove, a walk down to the water, or a table in the piazza all evening. Not every day needs a plan, and jet lag is real.
As needed · Highly recommended
The calendar
Arrivals Thursday, departures Wednesday. Come for one week or stay two. Weeks two and three are the fullest — that's when most people are around and when we'll do the big trips.
RSVP
Nothing to pay right now — I just need numbers and dates so I can hold rooms in Santo Stefano and book the van. I'll write back within a couple of days with where you're staying, flight advice and who else is around that week.