If the dog had not started licking my kneecaps, I would never have made the discovery. I was in the shop of Antica Dolceria Bonajuto, a 19th-century chocolate factory in Modica, Sicily, assiduously testing the various flavours on offer: ginger, cinnamon, fennel, cardamom and so on. I was wearing cycling shorts as I was travelling by bike.
“Are you wearing sun cream?” demanded the lady with the animal. She was Sicilian, but spoke English well. “He loves sun cream.” The dog was now down to my calves and licking like his life depended on Factor 50. She made a half-hearted attempt to pull him away. “Did they tell you about the Mares? No, of course not, they never mention it to the tourists, but that is so special! That is a jewel, a treasure! It is art!”
She reached along the polished wooden counter and fetched out a tiny blue box. She seemed quite at home, obviously a regular customer. Modica is famous among chocolate cognoscenti, the only place in the world where chocolate is still made by the old Atzec cold-working technique, bringing out subtleties of flavour and texture not found elsewhere. Housewives guard recipes that go back to when this Sicilian town was a major manufacturer for the Spanish empire. Even today, the supermarkets sell bags of cocoa mass ready to be mixed up with grandma’s secret ingredients.
The woman opened the tiny container and removed a small brown disc of chocolate. “Look, it took the expert Salvo Giannone a whole year to perfect it.” She became conspiratorial. “Under the dark chocolate is white, then a crispy layer of seaweed. It is exquisite! And wrapped inside, a tiny diamond of fish.”
The flavour was certainly peculiar: a battle of sweet, sour and salty that was finally won by fishy. I preferred the next delicacy: mpanatigghi, a concoction of beef mince, almonds, cinnamon and chocolate folded into a half moon of sugar-dusted pastry. A wonderfully bonkers take on the South American empanada.
If I had wanted an introduction to the profoundly complex and surprising creature that is Sicily, I could not have asked for a better one. I was cycling a tiny portion of the south-eastern corner of the largest island in the Mediterranean, but I had begun to see what makes it so special.
I had started in old Syracuse, itself an island called Ortigia, tethered to the mainland by two short bridges. Within a few minutes of rattling up its labyrinthine stone alleyways, I had encountered ancient Greek columns, Norman arches, Arab and Byzantine influences, and, of course, Italian driving. This last element is one that does not feature in the British Museum’s epic exhibition, Sicily: Culture and Conquest (until 14 August) which focuses on the astonishing confluence of art and ideas that makes Sicily.
Ortigia is something of a jewel itself, easily worth a couple of days’ exploring. Its fine cathedral manages to combine successfully elements as diverse as 2,500-year-old Greek columns and a baroque façade. Somewhere in the surrounding narrow streets, in about 287BC, Archimedes was born, and since he spent his entire life in the city, it was also here, presumably, that he famously sprang from his bath shouting Eureka, discovered pi, and invented his many devices, notably the “burning mirrors” which allegedly held an invading Roman fleet at bay for some two years (did they never consider a night attack?).
I could have lingered a whole summer in Syracuse, but instead I had to rattle over the bridge, and dive into the traffic heading south along the coast road. Fortunately my fear of Sicilian driving proved unfounded: cyclists are given plenty of room and usually a merry tootle on the horn. I reached the town of Avola and parked the bike on the beach while I swam, then headed inland for 10km to the town of Noto.
An earthquake in 1693 destroyed old Noto, and it was rebuilt in full-blown baroque style. It’s certainly ornate, but with some of the cold-hearted atmosphere of a Spanish colonial grid-pattern town: the palaces are too vast, the streets too straight. I preferred the smaller-scale domesticity of my hotel, Giardino del Barocco, where owner Giovanni lives among his grandparents’ heirlooms, a fascinating collection of 19th-century middle-class Sicilian life (his grandfather was the town’s doctor). Any fan of Lampedusa’s classic work The Leopard will love this pint-sized palace with its air of gracious but down-at-heel gentility.
Back on the road next morning, I made it to Modica and the Antica Dolveria Bonajuto factory with its curious chocolate. From there I somehow took the wrong road, the fast one, up to Ragusa, but then found an exhilarating descent through a series of hairpins into Ragusa Ibla, the most ancient part of the city, with its gorgeous central square, Piazza Duomo.
The last day’s riding was the best: a 55km swing through countryside, finally descending on narrow lanes into the Anapo valley, where I was supposed to be staying on a citrus farm called Sacre Pietre. Only there was not a soul to be found. I went off and explored the Pantalica, a nearby nature reserve inside a deep limestone gorge, where bronze age burial caves pepper the vertical cliffs.
Returning at sunset to the farm, I was greeted by Vincenzo Pitruzzello, the farmer, an ebullient host who insisted on showing me all the various varieties of oranges, picking armfuls. The air was heavy with the scent of blossoms and moths as big as bats were starting to flit about.
Vincenzo and his wife, Nunzia, are not only famous for their oranges: the farm restaurant was filling up with eager diners. “Drink this homemade red wine and you’ll never get a hangover,” he declared “Up to one litre – no problem.” There were six courses of astonishing food to negotiate, but the highlight was spaghetti con le sarde. Anywhere else that would be simple: pasta plus pilchards. Not here. This was a miracle of fennel and herbs, with a sprinkling of sultanas. Where else but Sicily would such a combination exist?
I left next morning for the airport, pockets full of oranges and, as promised, no hangover.
• The trip was provided by Inntravel, whose Realm of the Baroque self-guided cycling holiday in south-east Sicily costs from £978pp for seven nights’ B&B, two dinners, luggage transfers, maps and cycle hire. Electric bike hire supplement: £139pp. The trip is available from 19 March-30 June & 1 Sept-6 Nov
